Four .ged files for testing, learning, and demos: a small readable example, a realistic five-generation tree, a GEDCOM 7 version for comparing syntaxes, and one that's broken on purpose. All fictional, all free to use for anything.
The Lindqvist family: ~20 people over four generations, with events, occupations, a shared note record, and an ANSEL-free UTF-8 header. Small enough to read line by line — the best first file for learning the format or testing a parser.
≈20 people · 4 generations · GEDCOM 5.5.1 · UTF-8 · ⬇ download
2 VERS 5.5.1The Blomdahl family of Alingsås: 55 people and 15 families across five generations, with marriages, a divorce, emigration and residence events, and date qualifiers like ABT and FROM/TO. Realistic enough to exercise charts, reports, and converters properly.
55 people · 15 families · 5 generations · GEDCOM 5.5.1 · ⬇ download
2 VERS 7.0The core Lindqvist family rewritten in modern GEDCOM 7.0: no CHAR header (7.0 is always UTF-8), GIVN/SURN name pieces, and no CONC lines. Diff it against the 5.5.1 file to see exactly what the 2021 revision changed.
6 people · GEDCOM 7.0 · UTF-8 · ⬇ download
1 NOTE broken on purposeDeliberately damaged: a dangling pointer, a level jump, an unreadable line, a death before a birth, a 133-year lifespan, a child born before its mother, a marriage after a death, one-way family links, duplicate twins, and a missing trailer. For testing validators and import error-handling.
9 records · 12+ seeded problems · no TRLR · ⬇ download
Learning the format: open lindqvist.ged in any text editor next to the format guide and the structure clicks in minutes — levels, tags, and @-fenced cross-references. Testing software: the Blomdahl file is big enough to exercise sorting, charts, and reports; the broken file checks how gracefully an importer fails (run it through the validator to see the expected findings). Demos and screenshots: every person is fictional, so there's nothing private to blur.
The viewer can load the Lindqvist sample with one click — and every tool on this site offers the sample tree as a starting point, so you can try a converter before exporting your own tree.