We’re pretty generous at the moment, so take the opportunity and win a premium subscription – no costs, no obligation!

All you have to do to enter the contest is to tell us (using the comment-function) what features you would like to see on dynastree.com!

We are always striving to improve dynastree, and we value your opinion, so please let us know what features/improvements you would like to be added. The suggestions of course have to be reviewed by our developers, since they are the ones that have to engineer everything

Benefit from features such as:

• The extended search function
• Automatic matching
• Voucher for a PDF export of your family tree
• Premium family page

The winner will be picked on Wednesday morning (Central European Summer Time), so you’ll have plenty of time to come up with suggestions!

We would like to introduce dynastree’s Facebook group today. It is still small, yet steadily growing, and we would like to invite you to join the group if you have an account on Facebook.

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Be quick! The first person to join will receive a free one-month premium subscription!

Direct link

A new version of dynastree is about to be deployed, along with new features and some changes. We will be offering the opportunity to print out your family tree’s data in various lists (list of ancestors, list of descendants, birthday list, etc.), since our users have shown quite some interest in such a feature.

This week’s poll deals with another interesting new feature: we will start to offer our premium subscription with a trial phase of 14 days, free of charge – billing will only start after those 14 days, and you can cancel your subscription at any time during the trial phase. This gives our users the opportunity to test our premium services without any obligation. We would like to know if you are interested in testing our premium subscription.

Scotland’s capital Edinburgh hosted a family meeting of a special kind this past weekend: the largest clan gathering ever held! About 50.000 Scots and people of Scottish heritage from all around the world (one participant came all the way from New Zealand, he has both Scottish and Maori roots) came to Edinburgh’s Holyrood Park to participate in the event, which was hosted by Prince Charles – known as the Duke of Rothesay when in Scotland.

The 2-day celebrations included the largest Highland Games ever held in Scotland, a parade parade along the Royal Mile from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to Edinburgh Castle Esplanade, and, of course, a whiskey tasting. Members of 125 clans (500 clans are registered) attended the event, and the meeting of 85 clan chiefs in Edinburgh remained peaceful – contrary to the clans’ clashes in the past, which were often very violent. Clans were banned by the parliament in 1745.

The gathering was part of a series of events to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Scottish national poet, Robert Burns.

We could not resist the opportunity to include a stereotypical image of what Highlanders might look like!

It is widely known that there are less and less children per family, at least in industrialized, Western nations. Parents with two or even three children have become rare; classic, large families, which were not uncommon between the early and mid-20th century, are very rare today.

The genealogical record in terms of a large family is held by the American Samuel Mast, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Until his death in 1992, he could look back on no less than 824 living descendants, among them 11 children, 97 grandchildren, 634 great-grandchildren, and 82 great-great-grandchildren. Amazing!

You bet they really had to move together in order to get everybody in the picture!

This young couple would not have to bother with entering the maiden name of the bride in their family tree – they already share the same surname, Hildebrandt! But it gets even better: they also share their first name, Kelly.

When student Kelly Hildebrandt was bored while surfing Facebook, she searched for her own surname, and got exactly one match: Kelly  Hildebrandt. If only finding relatives and ancestors was that easy! What followed could be made into a movie: the two emailed each other, then talked over the phone, and eventually fell in love when Kelly Hildebrandt from Texas – Kelly Carl Hildebrandt that is – visited Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt in Florida. The wedding is planned for this fall.

But having the same surname as a couple also produces problems: when trying to book a cruise together, the couple almost could not start since the travel agency canceled one booking – they thought it was an inadvertent double booking. We are eagerly awaiting the wedding announcement: the Hildebrandt – Hildebrandt wedding?
All the best for this suddenly famous couple!

We doug up a website entirely dedicated to maps of all kinds, as long as there unusual, to say the least. You spend hours there browsing very creative maps of various kinds! A nice map we found lists all of the 50 states with their motto written on the map, really need. The explanations below list the all mottos, and provide some details. Did you know that only 24 states have a motto in English?

See for yourself: Strange Maps

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Today, we would like to present an extraordinary family tree to you! I guess you could call it a celebrity tree of some kind, it might just be the most famous virtual character ever created: Super Mario! The Italian plumber and his friends Luigi and Yoshi (not to mention all the others) had to master countless levels filled with foes (remember those annoying flying turtles?) and riddles, inspiring people to even make Mario cakes:

Those of you who grew up during the 80s and 90s will still remember the first video game consoles by Nintendo and the many different games around Mario, his friends, and his enemies. My personal favorite is actually Super Mario World, it has so many different levels and challenges.

Good times! Click here to see the Mario family tree from CNET France!