Read and Tidy 'GEDCOM' Genealogy Files

Reads and parses 'GEDCOM' (Genealogical Data Communication) files, the standard interchange format exported by genealogical software, and converts them into tidy data frames. Individuals, families, life events, and parent-child links are extracted into rectangular structures suitable for pedigree and kinship analysis. Additional helpers summarize file contents, convert place coordinates, and repair malformed records. Wikipedia family tree templates can be parsed into the same tidy structure. For a discussion of these and related data structures see [Hunter et al. (2026) ].

tidygedcom

tidygedcom reads GEDCOM (Genealogical Data Communication) files – the standard format exported by genealogical software such as Ancestry.com, MyHeritage, and Gramps – and converts them into tidy data frames. Individuals, families, life events, and parent-child links are extracted into rectangular structures ready for pedigree and kinship analysis. The package also summarizes file contents, converts place coordinates, repairs malformed records, and parses Wikipedia family tree templates into the same structure.

tidygedcom is a companion to BGmisc, which handles pedigree modeling and relatedness calculation, and ggpedigree, which handles plotting. tidygedcom focuses solely on getting genealogical data into R in a usable shape.

Example

library(tidygedcom)

ged <- readGedcom(
  system.file("extdata", "waugh.ged", package = "tidygedcom"),
  verbose = FALSE
)

ged[, c("personID", "name", "sex", "birth_date", "momID", "dadID")]
#>   personID                     name sex    birth_date momID dadID
#> 1        1       William Pitt Waugh   M 28 April 1775  <NA>  <NA>
#> 2        2          Matilda Grinton   F      abt 1797  <NA>  <NA>
#> 3        3       W. Henderson Waugh   M      abt 1835     2     1
#> 4        4      Martha Law Segraves   F      Oct 1814  <NA>  <NA>
#> 5        5    William Pitt Waugh Jr   M          1844     4     1
#> 6        6            Laura Watkins   F      abt 1846  <NA>  <NA>
#> 7        7 John William "Bud" Waugh   M   13 Dec 1879     6     3
#> 8        8       James Monroe Waugh   M   10 Nov 1867  <NA>     5

The package ships two example files drawn from the W. Henderson Waugh Family Tree: waugh.ged is a clean excerpt, and waugh_messy.ged retains the defects typical of a real export (conflicting duplicate birth records, missing sex values, uncertain surnames) for testing how your code handles imperfect input.

Installation

You can install the released version of tidygedcom from CRAN with:

install.packages("tidygedcom")

To install the development version of tidygedcom from GitHub use:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("R-Computing-Lab/tidygedcom")

Citation

If you use tidygedcom in your research or wish to refer to it, please cite the following paper:

citation(package = "tidygedcom")

Garrison S, Waugh C (2026). tidygedcom: Read and Tidy ‘GEDCOM’ Genealogy Files. R package version 0.1.0, https://github.com/R-Computing-Lab/tidygedcom/.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

@Manual{,
  title = {tidygedcom: Read and Tidy 'GEDCOM' Genealogy Files},
  author = {S. Mason Garrison and Christian Waugh},
  year = {2026},
  note = {R package version 0.1.0},
  url = {https://github.com/R-Computing-Lab/tidygedcom/},
}

Contributing

Contributions to the tidygedcom project are welcome. For guidelines on how to contribute, please refer to the Contributing Guidelines. Issues and pull requests should be submitted on the GitHub repository. For support, please use the GitHub issues page.

Branching and Versioning System

The development of tidygedcom follows a GitFlow branching strategy:

Feature Branches: All major changes and new features should be developed on separate branches created from the dev_main branch. Name these branches according to the feature or change they are meant to address.
Development Branches: Our approach typically includes two development branches, each serving distinct roles:
- dev_main: This branch is the final integration stage before changes are merged into the main branch. It is considered stable, and only well-tested features and updates that are ready for the next release cycle are merged here.
- dev: This branch serves as a less stable, active development environment. Feature branches are merged here. Changes here are more fluid and this branch is at a higher risk of breaking.
Main Branch (main): The main branch mirrors the stable state of the project as seen on CRAN. Only fully tested and approved changes from the dev_main branch are merged into main to prepare for a new release.