Ancestry_matchTrees Table

The Ancestry_matchTrees table stores the individual people who make up a match’s family tree. Each row is one person — an ancestor in the direct pedigree of a DNA match (or of your own kit). The rows for a single match together reconstruct that match’s tree as a pedigree, linked parent-to-child through person IDs.

The table is populated only when tree gathering visits a match’s compare page. A matches-only gather leaves it empty.

Column Reference

Column	Type	Source	Description
Id	int (PK)	Auto	Auto-incrementing primary key
matchid	string	Compare	The GUID this tree belongs to. Normally the match’s GUID; for your own tree it is your kit’s GUID. Stored uppercased.
surname	string	Compare	Person’s last name (from the pedigree person’s lastName)
given	string	Compare	Person’s first / given name (from firstName)
birthdate	string	Compare	Birth date as A* supplies it (free-text, e.g. a year or full date)
deathdate	string	Compare	Death date as A* supplies it (free-text)
birthplace	string	Compare	Birth location name
deathplace	string	Compare	Death location name
relid	string	Compare	Ahnentafel position within this person’s pedigree. The root person is 1; a person’s father is 2×relid and the mother is 2×relid+1. Lets you place each person in the tree without following the ID links.
personId	string	Compare	A*’s person ID within the tree. Unique per person within a match’s tree.
fatherId	string	Compare	personId of this person’s father (links to another row), or null
motherId	string	Compare	personId of this person’s mother (links to another row), or null
subjectGender	string	Compare	Gender of this person within the pedigree: “M” (a father), “F” (a mother), or “U” for the root person
source	string	App	Origin of the record. Always “Ancestry” for these rows.
created_date	string	App	Date the row was written (yyyy-MM-dd)
loginUsername	string	App	DNAGedcom username who gathered this data
sync	string	App	Sync status flag (written as “0”)
birthdt1	datetime	Derived	Parsed start of the birth-date range. Legacy/derived column — not populated during normal tree gathering.
birthdt2	datetime	Derived	Parsed end of the birth-date range. Legacy/derived — usually empty.
deathdt1	datetime	Derived	Parsed start of the death-date range. Legacy/derived — usually empty.
deathdt2	datetime	Derived	Parsed end of the death-date range. Legacy/derived — usually empty.

How It’s Populated

Rows are written during a per-match Compare visit, only when tree gathering is enabled. When the compare response carries the match’s linked tree (the completeTreeData / treedata endpoint), the app walks the pedigree starting at the root person and emits one row per ancestor:

1. The root person (the match) is written with relid = 1 and gender “U”.
2. The walk recurses into each person’s father (gender “M”, relid = 2×relid) and mother (gender “F”, relid = 2×relid+1), capturing names, birth/death dates and places, and the parent ID links.
3. Your own tree is captured the same way once per kit, keyed under your kit’s GUID in matchid, when “gather my tree” is enabled.

Data Preservation Rules

Rows are written as an atomic upsert keyed on (matchid, personId) — re-gathering a match refreshes that person’s fields in place rather than deleting and re-inserting the whole tree. This avoids a window where a tree could be wiped if the re-insert failed midway. If the same person is reached by two ancestral lines within one batch (pedigree collapse), the last write wins.

Related Tables

• Ancestry_TreeData — per-person tree metadata (tree size, public/private, whether a tree exists). The summary counterpart to this table’s individual people.
• Ancestry_matchGroups — the master match record. Its matchTreeNodeCount, matchTreeId, and treeId fields are set alongside these tree rows.
• AncestryAncestorCouple — the common-ancestor couples shared between you and a match, identified from these trees.