WitnessLives

You’ve invested years of research and built a family tree with hundreds — maybe thousands — of names. But your ancestors are more than a collection of birth and death dates. You’ve found yourself wondering: who in my family was actually alive during the American Revolution or the 1918 flu? I’m standing in this historic town — did my ancestors walk these streets? Which lines carry the most remarkable stories? Welcome to Witness. Witness is not another tree builder. It is an intelligent discovery and analysis layer that sits on top of the tree you’ve already built. Import your standard GEDCOM file and Witness transforms your raw data into a living, breathing family chronicle. Discover the Stories Hiding in Your Data Temporal Intelligence: Instantly see who was alive during major historical events — “188 of your relatives were alive when the Mayflower landed” — every match labeled documented or probable, and marked by how they relate to you: your direct line, a blood relative, or kin by marriage. This Week’s Issue: Home is a weekly edition — a lead life placed in its historical moment, one curiosity from the Tree Check, the Archives’ waiting count, and one pattern your family made. This Week in Your Family still carries the anniversaries, with its Sunday reminder. The Family Stage: One household — a marriage and its children — drawn as lifelines against falling time. Sweep the years and watch ages, unions, and departures unfold across a century. The Portrait: Every person opens as a portrait of their family — parents, brothers and sisters in true birth order, each marriage with its children, and a running head naming their household and their place in its birth order. A compass on your direct line (“gen 7 · father’s side”), a birthplace that opens the place itself, the household drawn as a length of time. Story and world open inline. Stories open with the family chart — parents in the marriage tie, aunts and uncles on their true sides, the sibship in birth order; tap a tile to travel, or hide it. Search by Name or Place: One search box finds people by name or by where their lives were recorded. Type “Worcester” and meet everyone in your tree who was born, married, or buried there. Every match is counted, newest first, paging back in time. Patterns in Your Family: where the family began, the moves it made, the oceans it crossed, and who turned out to be kin — one door, four findings. Field Discovery & Cemetery GPS: See who in your family has history within a mile — or a hundred — of where you’re standing, and the whole world of your tree on a map, era by era. AI-Powered Rich Biographies: Read warm, beautifully written life narratives for your ancestors, synthesized by AI that blends your tree’s data with real historical context — carefully constructed to never make unsubstantiated claims. Tree Health: Twenty-two forensic data-integrity checks — the FTAnalyzer catalog trusted by serious desktop researchers — run over every person, family, and date, each finding one tap from the person it concerns. Orphan Records finds the people disconnected from your tree and suggests where they might belong. Break Through Brick Walls: Stuck at a dead end in 1720? Witness analyzes your data gaps and generates a structured, expert Research Brief with suggested sources and local archives. In the National Archives: Federal records matched to your ancestors — draft cards, naturalizations, and more — each awaiting your judgment. The Field Guide: Every screen, explained — annotated walkthroughs of the whole app, one tap away. Absolute Privacy Witness is entirely read-only — we will never alter your original tree. Your GEDCOM file is encrypted with a key created on your iPhone that never leaves it: we store your file, but we genuinely cannot read it — and your recovery code brings it back on any device. Stop building. Start experiencing. Terms of Use: https://witnesslives.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://witnesslives.com/privacy