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!

DNA may not lie, But it sure is confusing

Example 1: I was watching a TV program about a woman who was going to give up her child to her sister who is unable to bear children. This got me thinking about the child’s DNA and how we might end up interpreting them.

Let’s say the Child has their DNA tested and they are the oldest generation living. Thus, what assumptions might we come up with from his test. If the child didn’t know they were adopted, would they figure out they were adopted.

His legal/adopted mother is the sister of his biological mother. Thus, his DNA results on his mother’s side would appear to be the same and no real unexpected results because his maternal side is the same with either mother. However, it may appear that his legal/adopted mother had an affair because his legal/adopted father’s family would not be showing in his DNA results. Also, what if his biological mother did not have any more children, thus we would not know that his legal/adopted mother is not his biological mother since neither woman had any additional children to find half siblings or descendants of those half siblings. Even if his biological father had additional children, this would not make his maternal DNA any clearer.

Moral of the story, even though DNA doesn’t lie, it might not be so straight forward. We need to always remember these outlying relationships and not judge our ancestors so quickly.

Example 2: I had a former co-worker who adopted her 1^st cousin’s child. Again, I was thinking about the Child’s DNA and how we might end up interpreting them. Her 1^st cousin’s mother and her mother are sisters. Again, let’s say the Child has their DNA tested and they are the oldest generation living and they don’t know they were adopted.

Let’s look at his legal/adopted mother’s DNA compared to his biological mother’s DNA. Both women share one set of grandparents through their maternal side of their family. Thus using the Leeds Method, we may find that the tester’s maternal grandmother’s side of the family matches correctly, however he has three grandparents that are not matching any known relatives, his father’s side (his father's parents), and his maternal grandfather’s side.

Thus, why might this happen? Did his mother have him with another man than his father? Did his grandmother have his mother with another man? The test might show that one branch, his maternal grandfather’s side appears to be matching his grandmother’s brother-in-law’s family. Did grandmother have an affair with her brother-in-law? See how easy it is to jump to the wrong conclusions. We need to test our theories.

This is where testing closer known relatives come in handy. Did his legal/adopted mother have any siblings who had children? If so, do these matches appear further away than expected. Did his biological mother have any other children and did they happen to test and are showing up as half-siblings. Did his biological mother have siblings who have children. If these people didn't test, we may need to seek out these types of relatives and ask them to test.

Moral of this story, again, DNA isn’t always straight forward. We need to let the DNA tell the story. Testing as many close relatives as we can helps us develop a clearer picture. Not only our maternal first cousins (in this case), but maybe his mother’s first cousins or their children (his 2^nd cousins).

A wonderful website to help with our confusing DNA matches is DNAPainter. Their Shared cM Project 4.0 tool has a handy chart to show where matches should fall into. In my 2^nd example, who we think should be his first cousins (children of his adopted mother's siblings) are really his 2^nd cousins and the shared DNA between 1C’s and 2C’s is very different.

Good luck in your DNA research and explore all the relationship possiblites to help in your DNA research!

Is your tree built out enough for your DNA Matches.

 Do you have that strange match that seems to match relatives on both your parents’ sides of the family?

You know your parents aren’t related but there is another reason.

Here is an example:

My maternal 1^st cousin twice removed, Fred married Ella Gorr. My paternal first cousin also married a Gorr. Ella’s parents are Albert Gorr and Emily Damp. They had a son Alvin Gorr. Alvin had a son Richard Gorr. Richard’s son married my paternal first cousin.

Thus my first cousin’s children with the son of Richard are also related to the descendants of Fred and Ella Gorr.  Ella is my first cousin’s son 2^nd Great Aunt. Her children are first cousins twice removed to said son. Ella’s grandchildren are 2^nd cousins once removed, while her great grandchildren are 3^rd cousins with my first cousin’s son.

I am third cousins of Ella’s grandchildren and 3^rd cousins once removed to her great grandchildren. Thus when looking at shared matches with my Paternal first cousin’s son, some of Fred and Ella’s descendants could end up on our shared matches list along with my expected matches from my Paternal side.

Moral of story, even though people say “DNA never lies” it can be confusing. Keep in mind that if all your 3^rd cousins did test, you might only match 90 percent of them. It is how DNA is passed down, very random.

I figured this all out because I had entered the spouses’ parents of people who married into my family. I recognized this name, however, even if I didn’t, I do all my entering in Family Tree maker, and whenever I enter a new surname, I can quickly see if that surname already exists in my Index. From there, I can do some quick research to see if those people are related to each other. This also helps with duplicate people. If I notice the same name already in my file, I do some extra research and see if in fact these are two different individuals or the same person and thus they need to be merged.

Example of Double First Cousins who Married Sisters

In one of the Facebook Groups I belong to, a member was reporting how her and her sister married Double 1st cousins. She shared this as a bit of a conversation starter and I just had to draw it out, so I could share with my DNA buddy in my Genealogical Society.

Kathryn wrote: "This is a match to my daughter and my son. I manage all 3 kits. If I was looking at this without knowing the relationship I would probably be asking my husband some questions - as my first guess would probably be half sibling to my children. However, this is my nephew. My sister and I married cousins, their parents are siblings that married siblings. So a brother and sister married a brother and sister and their respective sons' married sisters. Still with me? So this man is a first cousin to my children and also a first cousin once removed twice over - which then equates to roughly the same DNA as a half-sibling.

While this is an incredibly rare occurrence I would think, it does demonstrate that sometimes the obvious isn't always the correct answer :) Especially when looking at relationships in endogenous societies - usually much further back than this bunch of millennial's."

Now a correction to what Kathryn wrote, her nephew and her children are actually Double 2nd cousins, not first cousin's once removed twice over. They are at the same level from all their common ancestors and thus there would be no removed between them. Confusing, I know.

Anyway, enjoy the picture I created to give me and other's a visual of this complicated relationships.