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Seasoned genealogists know that blood relatives shouldn’t be the only people you research. “Cluster” research encourages you to study the people in a person’s community—their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and fellow countrymen—not just their immediate family members.
Recording non-relatives in family trees is not always straightforward, however. Here is how you can document non-family members in popular family tree-building programs.
Note: Findmypast and MyHeritage do not, as of this writing, offer a direct way to add non-family members to family trees. As a workaround, you can add the person as a parent or child to an existing profile in your tree, then remove the relationship. The person’s profile will still be in the tree and searchable by name, but it won’t be connected to anyone by blood.
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1. Ancestry.com: Networks
Announced at RootsTech 2025, Ancestry Networks are private workspaces where you can document information about the people who lived in your ancestor’s community.
Networks are collections of people who share something in common: families, immigration groups, local and religious communities, fraternal organizations, school classes, military units and more. Create one, then add existing profiles from your tree or create new profiles (for example, of non-relatives).
Ancestry.com allows you to upload images and sources for your networks—for example, a page from a census or city directory that mentions all of a street’s residents or a class’ yearbook photo.
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The tool (still in beta testing) is exclusive to Pro Tools subscribers as of this writing, but is expected to be made available to wider audiences.
2. Family Tree Maker: Add Unrelated Person
The popular Family Tree Maker desktop software allows users to add a father, mother, spouse, child or unrelated person to a tree profile. They won’t be cross-referenced in anyone else’s profile, but you can find their profiles underneath the People tab. Use the Notes tab to record details of their connections with others in the tree.
3. FamilySearch: Add Other Relationship
Genealogists all over the world collaborate on the FamilySearch Family Tree. It seems appropriate, then, that this “one world tree” would have a field for adding non-relatives to an ancestor’s profile.
From a person’s profile, go to Details, then scroll until you see Other Relationships. Click Add and select a relationship from the drop-down: Apprentice, Employment, Enslavement, Godparent, Household, Neighbor, and Relative. As when adding a child, parent, or spouse, you can either create a new profile for this person or find them by ID number in the Tree. Learn more in this YouTube tutorial.
4. RootsMagic: Associations
First introduced in RootsMagic 9, Associations allow you to add a variety of non-biological relationships to people in this popular desktop software. Watch a video tutorial here.
When viewing a profile, click the + icon to add, then select Association from the drop-down. Choose from a variety of relationship types (including friends, enslaver/enslaved, and doctor/patient) or create your own, then specify which two people have that connection. You can also add Associations as a fact type in the Edit window, and generate reports related to them.
5. Storied: Friends, Pets and More
Storied offers a robust set of relationships that you can add to a person. When viewing your family tree, click the Relationships tab. You can add friends, neighbors, military comrades, and even pets.
An experimental Connections icon maps out a person’s relationships using color-coded lines. Red indicates spouses and children, green for parents and siblings, and yellow for “other.”
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Last updated March 2025
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