How Far to build out one’s trees?

 

In many of the Genealogy FaceBook groups I belong, the big question is how far out do you build a tree and should I have separate trees for my family.

Let’s talk about the number of trees. When I started my genealogy journey, was I unmarried and thus I created one tree. I decided I would include not only my direct line, but my ancestor’s children. I started before computers, and was using paper forms and three-ring binders. This method worked good in the beginning because I really wasn’t finding a lot of information.

Then came the personal computer and genealogy software. I still didn’t build down my trees too much, being newer at this, I wasn’t always sure if I had the correct children. Then the internet was born, and more and more information are available online. Also, DNA came into the picture.

I have morphed into three main trees. My family, my husband’s family, and my half-siblings father’s family. There is overlap between the trees. My siblings and their descendants are in both my family tree and their father’s family tree. My husband, parents and our children and grandchild are in both my family tree and my husband’s family tree.

How far out do I build my tree? A lot farther than I did when I started. If you look at a family group sheet, it has both the husband and wife along with their parents. Thus, I enter that information into my tree too. Why do I include the spouse’s parents? Basically, to see if in-laws are marrying into my family in different places. I have had siblings marry cousins of mine. The cousins aren't necessarily siblings, some are and some aren’t. I have had an aunt married one gentleman and her niece marry her stepson. So, I like to figure out when in-laws are related to each other. 

I also, figure out all the descendants of my ancestors. Reason: these make great books, such as the “Goodwin Family”, where I would start with my oldest known Goodwin Ancestor and include all their descendants. Another Reason: those living descendants are the one’s taking DNA test and are showing up as your matches. I don’t know these people and thus the names are not always recognized because names change whenever a female descendant gets married. Thus, the more people I have in my family tree, the easier it is to figure out who my DNA matches are. 

Thus, DNA is a major reason to have one tree. For example, I had my half-siblings tested, now which tree do I attach their DNA to? Their tree which only has their father’s line or my tree which has our mother’s ancestry in? I can only attach the results to one tree. I guess I could have them take two test (waste of money) and attach one test to one tree and the other test to the other tree. However, I have created a special DNA Tree where I merge their father’s tree to my tree to create a DNA tree. At first, I was only including a couple of generations of descendants in this merged tree. I am now at the point; I almost need to merge our two complete trees and just work from there. I am hesitant, because I am the home person in my tree and my oldest brother is the home person of my sibling’s tree. It does get confusing when I look at someone and I see no direct relationship. My DNA tree is not a working tree, I don’t make changes in this tree. I recreate this tree about once a year and attach all the DNA tests that I manage in Ancestry to their profiles in the tree. 

So back to our questions: Should I create separate trees for my family? If you create one tree for each of your grandparent’s think of overlap in the trees. You for example, would be in each tree, all their descendants would be in multiple trees, unless you are going to end the tree at your grandparent level. However, think of all the people who will be missing from these trees if you don’t include them. Plus, when your cousin ask you how are you related to so and so? How hard is that going to be to figure out, or how easy it would be to calculate if they are in your tree. 

Plus, family trees are not like trees at all but more like spider webs where they connect in more than one spot. A person, from your maternal grandfather’s family might marry into your paternal grandmother’s family. What about in-law siblings where one marries into your maternal grandfather’s family and the other into your paternal grandmother’s family. If the trees are separate, you might not see this. Have you seen funeral announcements of old, where they list everyone who attended a funeral, you might see your paternal grandmother’s first cousin attending your maternal grandfather’s 2nd cousin’s funeral, why? Because the first cousin’s wife is the sister of the 2nd cousin’s husband. 

So how far out do you build a tree? For me, I build out as far as I can. I include the parents of spouses who marry into my family. I have expanded some of those spouse’s family lines to figure out if they are related to others with the same surname. I include all my distant cousins, because we share a common ancestor. I even include spouses of spouses? If my relative’s spouse was married before or after being married to my relative, I include their spouse too. I include their children with said spouse. Reason: Some families view their family different then blood lines, I have seen step-children listed as children in census records and obituaries. By placing them into their proper place, I will know exactly how we are related and why I don’t match DNA with someone. 

Does this make for big trees, yes it does. However, with computers, handling such big trees is no problem at all. I usually only work on a branch at a time, print reports for only a branch at a time. Thus, I am usually working only on a small subset of my big tree at any given time.

For a little background, my trees are created using Family Tree Maker (FTM) a genealogy software program that resides on my computer. I can merge trees, export branches of my tree to share with family members (this doesn’t remove them from my tree). A genealogy software program is a very powerful tool. If you are using only Ancestry for your tree, you won’t have all these capabilities. Thus, if you start with multiple trees, you won’t be able to merge them without purchasing a genealogy software program. Keep in mind, that all software genealogy programs don’t talk directly with Ancestry and thus you will need to export a GEDCOM (genealogy file) from Ancestry to load into your software program. You will lose all your images. However, FTM talks to Ancestry and you won’t lose your images. 

So, whether you are a beginner or been doing genealogy for many years, its always good to review how you are doing genealogy and think about how far to build out your tree and how many tree’s should you have.

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!