Legado Genealogy

title: "Legado Genealogy" client: "Personal product" category: "Marketing site" date: "2026-05-01" outcome_metric: "Encrypted diaspora genealogy platform in EN, ES, FR" description: "A full-stack genealogy platform built for African-diaspora family history, with encrypted records, GEDCOM import and export, DNA match tracking, and tools for documenting enslavement, migration, and emancipation across three languages." tech_stack:

• Next.js
• React
• TypeScript
• tRPC
• Prisma
• PostgreSQL
• Clerk
• Tailwind CSS
• Framer Motion
• Playwright cover_image: "/case-studies/legado-genealogy/image.png" live_url: "https://legadogenealogy.com" isFeatured: true featured_order: 1

Problem

Diaspora genealogy breaks the tools built for it. Most family-history software assumes clean parish records and surnames that carry cleanly down the generations. African-diaspora research rarely works that way. The paper trail runs through enslavement records, plantation ledgers, and names that change at emancipation, and the standard apps have nowhere to put any of it. The records that matter most end up crammed into a generic notes field, if they fit at all.

It also had to be private. Family history is sensitive, and some of these records name living people. Encryption could not be an afterthought bolted on at the end.

Approach

Legado is a full-stack app, not a brochure. There is a public marketing site in English, Spanish, and French, and behind sign-in there is a client portal where the real work happens. People build "groves," add relatives, and attach the kinds of records diaspora research actually depends on: enslavement and emancipation records, plantations and enslavers, migrations between places, name variants tracked over time, DNA matches with most-recent-common-ancestor analysis, and research notes pinned to a person or a line.

Sensitive genealogy data is encrypted at rest. The app imports and exports GEDCOM so no one is locked in, and the whole thing is typed end to end with tRPC and Prisma so the data model stays honest as it grows.

Outcome

Legado has been in active development since 2024 and is the project I keep coming back to. It is the clearest version of why I build the way I do: understand the real stakes first, then make the practical path visible. The diaspora-specific data model is the part I am proudest of, because it is the part no off-the-shelf tool was willing to handle.