Every family history has gaps. The My Roots page at Memoris names two of them: "the uncle who emigrated, the maiden name nobody wrote down." Memoris, the memorial platform from the studio that publishes SheAI News, now has two tools aimed at those gaps. My Roots looks for other people who share your places, surnames and cultures. Family Tree draws the family itself, generation by generation, and can start from a tree you already keep on another service.

Discover matching in My Roots and the Family Tree with its GEDCOM import both went into production on 10 August 2026. My Roots lives at memoris.io/myroots, Family Tree at memoris.io/family-tree. They share one Memoris account but answer different questions: who else is searching for the same family, and who exactly belongs where.

My Roots: matching on places, surnames and cultures

My Roots is built around "roots": the places a family comes from, the surnames it carried and the cultures that shaped it. "MyRoots isn't just about who your parents are, it's about where you come from, the cultures that shaped you, and finding others who share your heritage," the landing page says. For now, roots are added by hand in the My Roots dashboard.

The Discover tab then compares your roots with the roots other members have entered and lists the people who share one, matching on the same place, the same surname or the same culture. Each match is counted as a connection on the dashboard. The empty Discover tab spells out the rule: "The moment someone else adds the same place, surname or culture as you, they appear here automatically." It also asks members to set their roots to public "to be found by family you never knew". The landing page describes My Roots as "free to start".

Family Tree: a pedigree you can build or bring

Family Tree is a separate tool with a different job. It draws a pedigree on a canvas: each person is a card, partners are joined, children sit beneath them. The page describes the same picture, a family built "branch by branch, partners joined, children beneath them". You can start from an empty canvas, and the page suggests beginning "with the oldest name you remember".

A card for you is created automatically and kept in step with your Memoris profile photo. Every relative can get a photograph, uploaded straight into the tree, and the page adds that each person can carry "photographs, stories and a memorial".

Importing a GEDCOM file

The faster start is an import. Family Tree reads GEDCOM, the file format genealogy programs use to move a family tree from one program to another. Memoris accepts the variants written by Ancestry, MyHeritage and FamilySearch, with up to 400 people in one import. The Family Tree page puts the idea in one line: "Import your existing tree via GEDCOM and keep building where you left off."

400
People in one GEDCOM import into Memoris Family Tree, in production since 10 August 2026

The format goes back more than four decades. The name stands for Genealogical Data Communication. The FamilySearch wiki describes it as a data structure created by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "for storing and exchanging genealogical information so that many different computer programs can use it". The files are plain text with the extension .ged.

According to the current specification, the first public draft appeared in 1984, version 5.5.1 was drafted in November 1999 and became a standard in October 2019, and version 7.0 followed in 2021. The edition now published on the specification site, 7.0.18, is dated 17 February 2026.

Its second purpose is as a long-term storage format for preserving genealogical information in an open, standard format that will be accessible and understood by future genealogists and the systems they use.
FamilySearch GEDCOM Specification 7.0.18, Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 17 February 2026

One practical note for FamilySearch users: the wiki says a GEDCOM file "cannot be exported directly from FamilySearch Family Tree". It points instead to partner programs that read the shared tree and then write a GEDCOM file.

Where the tree meets the memorial

Relatives who have died are shown with a candle and a link to their memorial page. A name on a branch can therefore lead to a life story, photographs, and the candles and tributes that visitors leave on Memoris memorials, which anyone can browse without signing in.

What is not there yet

Two parts are still missing. The first is a Facebook import that would bring in a hometown, the places a person has lived and the languages they speak. The landing page lists it as "coming soon" and explains why: "Facebook import is coming soon, once Meta approves our app." Until then, roots are entered by hand.

The second is the map. The landing page already describes heritage mapping, with pinned ancestral places and family migrations, but the Map View tab in the My Roots dashboard shows only a placeholder for an interactive world map, marked "Coming soon". Readers should treat mapping as planned, not available.

Before you upload a family tree

A family tree file can hold living people as well as ancestors: parents, siblings and children, with names and dates of birth. The GEDCOM standard itself defines restriction notices for confidential data and for information "about living individuals", and recommends that programs let users decide how such data is handled, "for example by allowing them to exclude such data when exporting". It is worth checking what an export contains, and asking living relatives before their details move to a new service.

How to try it

Start at memoris.io/myroots and choose "Start Your Journey" to add your first roots, or open memoris.io/family-tree and sign in to begin a tree. If you already keep a tree elsewhere, save it as a .ged file and import it. If you do not, take the page's advice and start with the oldest name you remember.