About us
From your family tree to the ground
Visit My Roots is the platform between the ancestors you have already found and the heritage trip you have always wanted to take — with tools that are free at the core, and AI that makes connections that were not practical before.
Our mission
Genealogy platforms help millions of people build trees and discover records. Heritage tours prove how deeply people want to walk where their people lived. Most families are still stuck in the middle: they know who and where, but not how to turn that knowledge into a confident, affordable trip.
Our mission is to close that gap. We help you see your ancestors on a map, choose what is worth visiting, build a sensible itinerary, and carry a practical field guide — so you can visit your roots with clarity instead of guesswork.
Incredible tools — free at the core
We believe ancestry and heritage travel tools should be accessible. Layer 1 — maps, place review, trip builder, and field guide generation — is free for every authenticated user. Where we charge, it is only when real cost or ongoing premium value requires it (for example optional Explorer for enhanced export, or future marketplace bookings with Roots Experts).
We are not trying to sell you another subscription before you can plan your trip. We are building software that earns trust first — then optional ways to support the product and connect with experts when you are ready.
AI for what was not possible before
For decades, heritage travel meant spreadsheets, guesswork, and expensive specialists — or giving up because the research felt too hard. Modern AI changes what is practical: not replacing genealogists or local experts, but helping you connect tree data to real places, explain ambiguous locations, and turn structured facts into narrative you can use on the ground.
We use AI carefully and behind the scenes — for narrative in your field guide, bounded assist on place corrections, and similar tasks — always with privacy rules that matter for family history: no raw GEDCOM sent to external models, no living-person data in AI workflows, and deceased-person data used only to serve your account.
The goal is not a chatbot. It is structured tools — upload, map, select, plan, guide — that feel like they were built for heritage travel, not generic genealogy software.
Our company
Visit My Roots is built by a small team focused on one problem: activating the family trees people already have. We sit between genealogy platforms (which stop at the screen) and luxury escorted tours (which most families cannot afford) — offering self-service planning today and, over time, a curated Roots Expert marketplace for remote research and in-country help.
We are based in the United States and serve heritage travelers worldwide. Our product direction is documented openly in our vision: plan the trip yourself first; find vetted expert help when you need a human on the other side of the archive door or the parish path.
Founder
Andrew
St. Louis, Missouri · United States
Andrew founded Visit My Roots after more than two decades in information technology — including executive leadership and large-scale project management — and a lifelong personal interest in ancestry research. He saw the same frustration many families feel: years of discoveries on Ancestry or similar platforms, and still no practical way to turn that work into a trip worth taking.
Technology and AI now make it possible to bridge tree data and real-world heritage travel in ways that were not feasible even a few years ago — mapping lineal ancestors, resolving historical place names, clustering stops into days, and producing personalized field guides that read like they were written for your family, not a template.
Andrew's aim is simple: help people take the journey back to their roots — with tools that respect privacy, stay affordable, and get better as the platform grows.
Ready to see your ancestors on a map and plan your first heritage trip?
Questions? andrewprimary@gmail.com