FamilySearch

FamilySearch

FamilySearch organizes genealogy data around Persons in a collaborative Family Tree. Each Person has an ID (e.g. PPPJ-MYZ), names, gender, life events (birth, death, residence, etc.), and relationships (parents, children, spouses).

The platform REST surface expects OAuth bearer tokens for authenticated tree reads; unauthenticated sessions cover only a narrow public subset.

Data Model

• Person — an individual in the tree; has names, gender, facts (life events), and display summary.
• Relationships — typed links: ParentChild and Couple. person1 → person2 direction matters.
• Facts — life events: Birth, Death, Marriage, Residence, etc. Have date and place.
• Names — multiple name forms (localized). BirthName is the primary type.
• Sources — citations linking persons to historical records.
• Ancestry — ascending pedigree using ahnen (Ahnentafel) numbering: 1=person, 2=father, 3=mother, etc.
• Descendancy — descending tree from a person through their children.

Exploration patterns

• Person IDs: Alphanumeric codes like PPPJ-MYZ, MMM3-KG7. Always uppercase with hyphens.
• Current user: Resolve the signed-in tree person first—that anchors pedigree and descendancy walks.
• Ancestry generations: Default 3, max 8; each person in the result carries an ascendancy number.
• Search: Use given name, surname, birth date, and place fields the tools expose—combined criteria narrow record matches.

Gotchas

• User-scoped tree: The collaborative Family Tree is shared, but access starts from the authenticated user's tree person.
• Living persons: Privacy restrictions apply to living persons. You may not be able to read details of living individuals unless you're directly connected.
• Rate limits: Keep request cadence modest—the service will throttle aggressive bursts.