Family Trees

[Denise Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Denise]

Hello-
After receiving someone's family tree which has 29,000 names in it, of which I am one (along with my parents, grandparents, cousins, etc.) my husband and I are having a discussion of when is enough, enough, when researching your family tree? He sees no point in adding these names in my tree, (which at this point my tree totals about 2400 names) other than immediate connections; I see it as a whole branch of my tree that has been dumped in my lap that I don't have to research. I would like to hear thoughts on this subject. I feel that that's what "One World Tree" will eventually become, and he sees it as it's not really important, unless you are National Geographic doing DNA and want to find "number one" that connects us all together.

I would like to hear opinions on this! By the way, I should mention that this family tree which I have received, was commissioned work done by Jim Kurtti, (Finnish American Reporter) at Finlandia University, so I believe it to be true and factual, with documented sources.

Thank-you,
Denise

[Karen Norwillo Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Karen Norwillo]

Denise,
I know how you feel. I'm not sure there's ever too much information, but I have been becoming more particular about what names I add to my program. I'm mainly concerned about those that affect me directly. If I try to add all the other names, I'd go crazy. I keep the info in my files in the event that I should find a direct connection in the future. It's fun going through all the new info sorting out the ones that are important to me right now.
Cuz, Karen

[cdahlin Registered Find all posts View Profile Close cdahlin]

I received the origin to my database from a friend of mine, Bert Lindvall. He happened to have much of my closest families in his database and I appreciated this info very much. The database had almost 20.000 names in it at that point. Much if this was not so interesting for me.

Then I added what was missing for my closest family and today my database has about 37.000 names. Most of these are so distant relatives that they are of "less interest" for my closest family, but they are there because I have also helped other friends with their research and this way put in other families too.

My strategy is mainly to try to go one generation back in time and try to put in all my ancestor's siblings. Next I try to find these sibling's descendants, because they are my relatives. This way the database grows very quickly and one day you must "give up" to find all of your living relatives.

But I have also a number of other databases. My wife is from Kronoby and the Cronobydatabase that I have a copy of on my computer is very large, almost 100.000 names. I have never had any plans to merge it into my "own" database because of the same problems you just mentioned. I keep these databases as sources.

But of course it is also interesting to find a connection back to such special people as Runeberg, Mannerheim, Sibelius so I have a lot of such sidebranches too.

It is up to everyones own interest how far you want to go.

Christian

[Lasse1951 Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Lasse1951]

How far to go?

Denise and others,

It's of course up to you how much information you put into your database, but I have found out that there is never too much info, sooner or later you will find out that the info you collected 5 years ago, is important. So it happend to me when I started finding out about what I call "relatives network", I just found out that within a relatively small geographical area most of the movements and marriges occur, and there is very seldom new blood coming from outside of that area. As an example I can take my son, he's more than 10 times releated to him self, all this from my and his mothers side, none from my fathers side. This all helps in hunting other relatives, and also in understanding the life of our ancestors time, it was much narrower.

My way of doing my research has for the last 10-15 years been to try to follow all into the family married members ancestral line backwards, and it has unweiled a teriffic network of relatives. There is still some paths not fully researched, but this hobby is a hobby for lifetime, it's never ready and finished.

For some reason I have been productive today, writing 2 or 3 posts, maybe this is a sign that the summer is over????

Lasse Holm

[Denise Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Denise]

Family Tree

O.K. I have decided to take the big plunge and merge my database with the new one, and I have a plan. You see, I have a database at work and a separate one at home, so I am going to just merge the one at work, and in case anything awful happens, I still have my original one safe and sound. I guess I just needed to hear a few opinions from others who have had this experience, and I truly appreciate everyone's input. Here I go, ready or not!

I wonder if Hasse Nygard is waiting for my new gedcom!!!


Thank-you all so much!!!

Best Regards,
Denise

[cdahlin Registered Find all posts View Profile Close cdahlin]

Good luck!

You seem to be safe and secure with two copies. That's good!

Christian

[Denise Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Denise]

Family Tree

Hi,
Thanks to all of your input and insight, I took the plunge and merged the gedcoms, and I'm quite pleased how it all turned out. There were only about 30 duplicates and about 20 or so corrections that I've found so far. All in all, it wasn't so hard afterall. The connection so far that I have found was my mom's paternal aunt's side of the family that I knew very little about, and I'm totally amazed out how large that branch of the tree is!!! Thanks again to everyone for all the help as I wouldn't have had the nerve to do it otherwise!

With sincere thanks,
Denise