New to family history? Start here

You don’t need any genealogy experience — or a plan for your whole family tree — to get started in FamYarn. This guide walks you through beginning small and building up whenever you have a few minutes.

Start with one person

Add a single person to begin — yourself, a parent, or a grandparent. You only need a name; dates, places, and stories can come later. Use Add Person, enter a name, and save. That’s enough to get going.

Add a memory in your own words

Once you’ve added someone, write down one thing you remember about them — where they grew up, what they did for work, or a story you don’t want to forget. FamYarn prompts you with plain-language questions like “What are they remembered for?”, so there are no formal fields to fill in and no genealogy terms to look up. Answer in whatever words come naturally.

You don’t need a finished tree

There’s no required order and nothing you have to complete. A single story, photo, or memory is worth saving on its own, and you don’t have to trace a full family line to get value from FamYarn. Add what you know now, and fill in the rest over time.

Invite relatives to help

You don’t have to do this alone. You can invite relatives to add their own memories and photos, and they can contribute as much or as little as they like — which also means the people who remember the most can add details you might not know.

Where to go next

Once you’re comfortable adding people and memories, the Getting Started: Working with People guide covers browsing everyone in your tree and seeing how they connect.