Pedigree

This guide is intended to provide an introduction to using the FamilySearch Pedigree resource to display a graph of the persons in an ascending (ancestry) or descending (descendancy) pedigree.

The Person

The anchor to the graph is a person as the root of the tree. The Person resource is used to read and edit persons in the tree.

Spouses

The Relationships to Spouses resource is used to list the relationships of a person to the person's spouses. The Couple Relationship resource provides a way to create a couple relationship between two persons. See the Create Couple Relationship example request. (Note that the FamilySearch Family Tree requires person1 to be male and person2 to be female.)

Parents and Children

The Relationships to Children resource and the Relationships to Parents resource are used to list the relationships of a person to the person's children and parents. The Child and Parents Relationship resource provides a way to create relationships between children and parents. For an example request, see Create Child and Parents Relationship.

The Child-and-Parents Relationship

The FamilySearch Family Tree uses a concept called the "child-and-parents relationship" to create parent-child relationships. The child-and-parents relationship is a description of the relationship between a child and two parents and is the key component used in constructing lineage. This relationship governs the relationship between a child and the child’s parents, that is, parent1 or parent2 or both parents, with the possibility that one of the parents is not specified. This relationship model is an extension to the standard parent-child relationship defined by GEDCOM X and is also referred to as a "ternary relationship". The child-and-parents relationship also contains a description of the relationship between the child and each parent, including information about the lineage of the child, whether it is biological, adopted, step, etc.

When reading relationship lists, such as the Relationships to Children resource and the Relationships to Parents resource, the information is provided as both a list of parent-child relationships and as a list of child-and-parents relationships. This is done as a convenience for clients who may want to display the information as one way or the other. When creating or updating a relationship between a child and parents, only the child-and-parents relationship can be used.

The Ancestry Query

The Ancestry query is provided as a convenience for constructing pedigrees and is used to query the application for an ascending pedigree rooted at a person (and optional spouse) for a specific number of generations (with a maximum of 9 generations). The result of the query is a list of persons and relationships. Each person element provides limited information about the person, but includes "display properties" that describe how to display the person in the graph.

Display properties for persons in the graphs include numbers that indicate each person’s generational position in the tree. These numbers are taken over from traditional genealogical numbering systems and include an ascendancyNumber modeled on an Ahnen number to indicate the person's position in the ancestry graph and a descendancyNumber using a d'Aboville number to indicate the person's position in the descendancy graph.

For an example request showing you how to make a query for the ancestry graph of a given person, see Read Person Ancestry.

The Descendancy Query

The Descendancy query is similar to the Ancestry query and is used to query the application for a descending pedigree rooted at a person (and optional spouse) for a specific number of generations. The result of the query provides a list of persons and relationships. Each person may supply a descendancy number in the display properties for the person. The descendancy number is interpreted as a d'Aboville number which can be used to determine the position of each person in the descendancy. The descendancy query may also support the inclusion of the spouses of each person in the descendancy graph. Spouses returned in the query must have an -S appended to their descendancy number to indicate that the person is the spouse of the associated person.

For an example request illustrating how to make a query for the descendancy graph of a given person, see Read Person Descendancy.