FamilySearch Person Pages: Summaries of Your Ancestors’ Lives
FamilySearch.org is home to the world’s largest online family tree, and it contains records for over one billion people. Discover more about your own relatives—or add to what is already known about them—by exploring their individual pages.
What Is a FamilySearch Person Page?
A person page is a summary of all known biographical and genealogical information about one person. Pages for deceased persons are public and can be viewed or altered by anyone; however, the pages of living people are private to the user who created them.
Public person pages are a wealth of collaborative knowledge for a person’s descendants. FamilySearch users add what they know, attach historical records as evidence, and connect these pages to the pages of that person’s parents, spouses, siblings, and children.
For example, let’s say that a descendant created a person page for her second-great-grandfather, but she only knew his name and christening details. Later on, another descendant found this page, uploaded a photo, and added a spouse. A third person entered death data transcribed from a tombstone and created person pages for several of their children.
As FamilySearch users pool their knowledge, these pages reveal the stories of our ancestors’ lives and their family relationships. This collaborative effort helps everyone share, discover, and preserve their interconnected family history.
How to Find a Relative’s Person Page
The FamilySearch Family Tree doesn’t contain person pages for every deceased person, but it’s worth searching the more than 1.2 billion person pages that have been created.
If you are already connected to the FamilySearch Family Tree, you may find a relative in the tree view. Sign in with your free user account, and choose the Tree tab. Then navigate through your ancestry until you know where your relative’s information should be. If you find the person’s name, click it, then click View Person to go to the page about that person.
If you can’t easily find a certain relative in the tree, or you’re not yet connected to someone in the tree, you may also run a search for existing person pages. In the menu at the top of the page, click Family Tree, and then click Find. In the search boxes, enter what you know about the person. Then click Search.
You may see multiple search results for person pages with information similar to what you entered. Carefully review potential matches. It’s possible that more than one person page has been created for your relative. (If you are confident that there are duplicates, you may merge the pages.) It’s also possible that a page has not been created for your relative. If that’s the case, you may want to add one.
Understanding the FamilySearch Person Page
The FamilySearch Person page has been designed to hold an extraordinary amount of information about your ancestor. Depending on how much has been added, it’s almost like visiting a small library—a library that’s completely dedicated to your ancestor!
Understanding how the person page is organized will help you know how to navigate everything that’s there and find exactly what you’re looking for.
Name Banner
The first thing you see when you go to your ancestor’s person page is probably the name banner, located at the top of the page.
The name banner includes the following information and links:
- Your ancestor’s complete name.
- Your ancestor’s birth and death dates (as much information as is known).
- Your ancestor’s Family Tree ID number, which you can use to quickly find this page again in the future. You can also share the ID number with someone else so he or she can likewise quickly find the page.
- A link for viewing your ancestor within the FamilySearch pedigree chart known as Family Tree.
- A link for viewing a zoomed-in, simplified pedigree chart that shows how you and your ancestor are related.
- A link for following your ancestor’s person page. When you follow an ancestor, you receive a notification any time someone adds information or edits his or her person page.
Navigation Tabs
Below the name banner is a row of navigation tabs. In a way, this is the most important section of the person page. That’s because whichever tab you have selected determines everything you see below the name banner.
If you ever visit your ancestor’s person page and things look different than the last time you were there, it’s probably because you’re viewing a different tab.
