How to build a family tree: a step-by-step guide
Most people try to start a family tree from the oldest ancestor they have heard of, and stop there. The right direction is the opposite: you work backwards from yourself, because each step rests only on the one before it.
Step 1. Start with yourself
The first record is you. Then your parents, then theirs. It feels tedious, but the most common mistake in genealogy is starting from the middle and later merging two people who merely shared a name.
The minimum for each person: full name, year of birth (approximate is fine, written as "~1919"), place of birth, year and place of death.
Step 2. Collect the papers already in the house
There are more documents at home than people expect: old passports, work record books, military cards, diplomas, marriage certificates, letters, and photographs with writing on the back.
Always check the back of a photograph. The most valuable detail — a pencil note reading "1961, Kokand, with aunt Rahima" — is usually there.
Photograph every document with your phone. Originals get lost, burn and take on damp; a digital copy can sit with everyone in the family.
Step 3. Ask the elders — without postponing it
This is the most urgent step in the whole process. The archives will still be there tomorrow; your grandmother’s memory will not.
Good questions are open ones: "What did your father do?", "Where did your house stand?", "What was your wedding like?", "Who is in this photograph?". Asking "What was your grandfather called?" gets you one word; asking "What do you remember about your grandfather?" gets you half an hour of story.
Record the audio if you can. In twenty years both the information and the voice itself will matter.
Step 4. Go to the official records
Where oral memory ends, documents begin. Since 1 September 2026, archive records can be searched online through the state Shajara system on my.gov.uz.
Mahalla archives, citizens’ assembly records and mosque registers also sometimes hold what the state archive does not.
Step 5. Record contradictions rather than hiding them
Two relatives giving two different dates is normal. The mistake is picking one and deleting the other.
Record both and name the source: "Aunt Rahima: 1927. Passport: 1929." When a third document turns up later, it will be clear which was right.
Step 6. Keep it in one place and open it to the family
A family tree in a notebook stays in one house and is lost in one fire. Photographs on a phone leave with the phone.
Filling the tree in together with family makes it grow faster: your nephew in Tashkent knows the Bukhara relative from a side you do not. That is why modern platforms are built around invitations and roles.
Questions & answers
What age is best to start a family tree?
The earlier the better — the limit is not your time, it is your older relatives’ memory.
What if I do not know an exact date?
Write the approximate one and mark it as approximate: "~1919". An empty field never gets searched later; a marked one does.
Does the mother’s line belong in the tree?
Absolutely. Traditional trees often recorded only the father’s line, but half of a family’s memory sits on the mother’s side.