How ENORMOUS is your family tree??

[glasjam]

I have just gone through a load of "Hot Matches" on Genes Reunited because I had 20 pages of them and it was getting scary. As is often the case most of them I just discarded instantly but there were the odd few that I had to follow up. So I sent out my "are we connected?" message and got some replies, mostly negative. But, here's my point - when people said you are welcome to look at my tree I have gone to do this and have been unable to because their trees are just too enormous and my computer can't cope. Some of the trees I have tried to open have had 14,000-24,000 people on them.

How on earth do you get to the point where you have 24,000 people on your tree??!! Isn't it a little meaningless when the relations are THAT distant.

I was interested in the "are any of your relatives famous" thread. So many of you seem to have famous relatives. Now obviously, some of you have these relatives quite "close" in family terms but others must be soooo distant. Is this how you get them - do we all have famous relatives if we just keep going on and on with this like an enormous fractal?

I'm not having a dig - it's an addictive hobby as I already know to my cost (all those certificates!) but I'm intrigued by those of us that go on and on - obviously you get back as far as you can and then it must be a case of going out sideways...ad infinitum. The furthest I've got back is 1749 on a direct line although there are a few marriages into this line that go back a little further - at this stage I;m not so interested because it doesn't feel close enough IYSWIM?

BTW I have about 450 in my tree.

I'm always a bit wary of the trees with tens of thousands in - I reckon there's a bit of name collecting going on there... They'll be going back and then forwards again (IYSWIM - descendants of siblings etc.) as well.

Think I've got about 500 or so in my tree, been quite lucky in that quite a lot of my lines have been easy to trace - unusual surnames and staying put in one little village for a century or so. I've got some lines back to people born late 18th century, but not going to be getting at many records offices anytime soon to get back any further. Quite a lot of my ancestors seem to have got caught up in the industrial revolution and I'd love to know where they were what they were doing before that.

I'd agree. Those MASSIVE trees...they tend to turn me straight off. Much more interesting to have fewer names but with more details and stories to go with them.

Mind you I am chuffed to have (kind of) found a 4th cousin a few times removed ( OK I'll spare you the details) who was on the kitchen staff of the Titanic and lived to tell the tale. A small nugget of gold in the pile of sand!

I've made some great connections with distant rellys via genesreunited and other sites and we have fun as we find new information and can supply pictures to each other and fill in research gaps.

My branches of trees go into 100s not thousands, but it is the well researched lines which are most fun, sorry, rewarding.

If you don't already do it, try Googling new names with and without associated place names..I have found it turning up interesting snippets and well worth the time! Odd newspaper archives are being digitised and local history groups occasionally give unexpected hits!

Happy Hunting!

can go back to is the mother of someone born in 1694 (she is my children's 8th great grandmother) on a direct line which is bloody cool

can span many branches down from both her and my children's 6th great-grandfather but the one we have up on the wall just goes straight up from my kids with no progeny of my generations siblings

Yes, I like to try and find out about the lives of the relatives I've traced. It's really reawakened an interest in social history for me. What was life like for a saddler in Walsall in the mid-19th century? What was it like for my gt gt gt grandmother having 13 children (and childbirth!)in the late 19th century - what was that little village like in the Cotswolds in 1772 when my relatives married in the beautiful church that's still there? Why is there a 20 year gap between children in one set of distant gt gt etc. grandparents (guess I'll never know that one!).

That's what I like about doing this family tree stuff - the name collecting does leave me a little cold. But like I say, it is addictive and who knows whether in 10, 20 years time I'll be eating my words when all those new censuses (censi?) come online and new stuff get's digitised onto the net! Maybe I'll even find some gems like your Titanic one Rabbit68?

I'm the same as you glasjam.

Plus I have no idea how many people are in my tree because I haven't used any software, just lots of stuff printed off!

mine is big, my sister is currently going through all the Jones and Evans in wales!

My great grandmas birth certificate arrived last week so we are able to do a bit more.

Was lovely as her name was Eliza..(which we didn't know) and my other sister has a daughter called Eliza who is 13! so that was a nice siprise.

dhs uncle did a family tree for his sise-its huge.

id love to do one for my side as its fairly unusual surname(dh isnt).

I've had to try to stop mine getting too big - it's all to easy to go off on a tangent especially when you find another tree linked with yours and add all of their 'branches' in. It doesn't help that alot had 10+ kids! Then you have to decide whether to stop when the females marry or whether you carry on with the line.

idobelieveinghosts - I'm doing Lewis, Williams and Phillips in my Welsh line!

Gotta love those welsh surnames - I've got jenkinses, joneses and two lots of davieses! Absolute nightmare... I was absolutely amazed at how many David Davies there were in what I thought was quite a small town in 1891!

We have Williams' too!...it lovely to find out some more info like occupation too. My great grand-dad was a collinger ? engine driver

My dads i think wil be a bit easier..his family are all from Gloucester.

Mine currently has 426 members. They are all the relatives I have been able to find in my father's father's side of the family.

Ours goes back to 1675, and I have gone sideways as far as I can. It hasn't been too difficult as we have an exremely unusual surname, and all the people I have currently found with this name are descendants of my great-great-great-grandfather.

ooh, no Welsh connections yet (phew!) Luckily no Smiths either!

glasjam,just a thought re: that 20 years gap between groups of children...are you SURE it's the same parents?
Names tend to get repeated through the generations and you can barely move for Mary Anns and Eliza's (for example) in some places as the same forenames crop up time and again..could it be a son named after his father married a woman with the same name as his mother???
We have had to do a big untangle on our tree because of this problem with fathers, sons and cousins, all with the same first name, in the same location, marrying girls with the same Christian name.!!!
All adds to the enjoyment of course.
Glad you found the church where your ancestors married...have you visited it and if so, did you get the shivers?

I'm going to the town where my ancestors lived next week. I can hardly wait!

I have Jenkins in mine too - my Mum has always been proud of her "Welsh" heritage as she thought her Grandfather had come to Walsall to become a saddler with his 5 brothers from somewhere in Wales...err. no they didn't! So far I have got back to the turn of the 19th Century and they are still hailing from the Midlands although I have hit a brick wall. Got a year of birth of approx. 1801 (from 1841 cs info), a name but no idea where born.

Rabbit68 - when I visited the church where my gt gt gt gt gt grandparents married I didn't know that fact. I had just gone to the only church I found when visiting the village that I'd seen named on a census as the place of birth of my Great Great Great Grandfather. I was strolling around and came across a rather large headstone with the right family name on - it was only when I got back home and did some further research and contacted a local historian that I realised that the headstone was that of my Great Great Great Great Grandparents AND my Great Great Great Grandfather! THAT was spooky! Further research revealed that the Gt (x5) married there in 1772. Unfortunately they weren't christened in the same church so the trail ends there at the moment! The rest of my family live nearer than I do (ie. the same country!) and they have since visited and placed flowers on the grave.

It was lovely to be there and wonder what they were like, what they did etc. It was a particularly lovely village too.

Re; the 20 year gap - it came from census info and the children were all described as children of the parents. My immediate thought was that the youngest child may have been the illegitimate offspring of the eldest daughter but I will never know that for sure and somebody might be turning in their grave at the very thought!

I hope you have an interesting trip to the town of your ancestors SoMuchToBats - you'll have to report back!

Thanks glasjam! It's Whitstable in Kent.

idobelieveinghosts - might that be colliery engine driver?

Got lots of colliers/coal miners/hewers etc in my welsh side. Sounds like an awful life . I'm stuck in mid-1850's with them, they all seem to have moved from here, there and everywhere, Wales in the first part of the 19th century and I'd love to be able to work out where they were before then and what made them go to the mines.

My relatives were all oyster dredgers.

I have 882 on mine from both sides of the family.

I have great fun finding out what they did, on one side they were Jewish silk weavers, and butchers, originally from Poland.

The other side are Scots via Denmark, and agricultural workers, and on the seas.

Rabbit68, my GGreat Uncle was also on the Titanic, but went down with it, he was a boiler man, so probably didn't stand a chance.

I've got 1729 people in my Tree ATM. I followed all the lines back and have also come forward because I wanted to find living relatives.

I wouldn't trust the info on Genes Reunited though without cross referencing. A lot of people have just seized on a likely candidate with the right name.. I started doing DH's tree, and his auntie and cousin had trees on GR. They had a different wife for a direct ancestor about 2 generations back. Didn't take too long to totally discount the family they thought was the right one by checking the census.

Also the Hot Match thing is rubbish! It ignores the town of birth. It gave me about 200 "matches" for my mother, just because she had quite a common name.

With you on the hot match thing catweazle. I only even look at the ones which have 2 or more matches. Rather oddly only comes up with 9 matches for my uncles tree which has a good half that's the same as mine on it as we've been working together!

I'm considering taking my common names off the tree just because of the billion totally random matches it comes up with...

I have tried to do direct lines only BUT if i added in siblings and followed their lines too then I would end up with a lot of people. I have one lot who had 13 children - add in their spouses and follow it back and then follow it forward and you have too many.

I have also broken dh's family up into the two sides from his parents BUT on mine I have them together - so if I put all four sides together as well it would get very complicated.

I do believe in ghosts/bubble rock - I too am doing
evans, jones and Lewis in Wales

Yes - it is a pain as like you guys - I have tonnes who have very common names - what is it with english people naming children after kings and queens - grrrrrrrrrr. At least in years to come they will know they have the right one with dd1's name.

On the english side - I have lots of williams to look up - how many bloody william wheelers were boatmen in the midlands for crying out loud

I have done what I can and now am going back to start ordering birth certificates so I can confirm I have the right people - too many common names.