Genealogy Chat

I have decided to be really ruthless and prune my tree on my Family Tree Maker. Since I subscribed to Ancestry 3 years ago I have added anyone who is remotely connected and have decided that I have gone too far. Some of them are only slightly connected to me by marriage. Anyone who my tree maker says is not directly related I have permanently deleted! One of the disadvantages of having Ancestry, you have been warned!

Michael I understand what you are saying, but there does come a point where these far flung branches are more nuisance than they are interesting. Those who married in to my 7 x GGPs siblings are really of little practical interest to me, other than a possible previous family connection. I get regular contacts on here for these far flung branches and am able to tell people little of interest, other than yes, your Maud Smith married my Fred Bloggs in 1703! No, I don't know who her parents were, nor where she came from, and as they didnt have any children, there is little else I can usefully tell you. My tree on Tribal Pages is different, of course. You can hang any spares and strays on there without cluttering up your proven tree with non-blood linked relatives. OC

Those are very good points, Michael. On one part of my tree I have even deliberately included an ancestor's in-laws in-laws. This was because I own an original document in which all 3 families are named and which proves their social and business interests were quite closely linked. As a result several GR members connected to one of those families, though not genealogically connected to me, made contact and we were able to compare notes on puzzling bits of family stories which only made sense when all the pieces came together. My document also turned out to contain information crucial to their research. That said, I have made a policy decision not to add all the siblings and ancestors of the spouses of my genealogical lines as it just gets too heavy. I generally include the spouse and possibly the parents if named on the marriage entry (very useful in confirming the correct individual in a small village with lots of same-named cousins!). If I do get contacted by a member interested in my non-genealogical people, I note their name and am sometimes able to refer them on to someone they are related to.

On my tree here I only have my direct line ancestors, Grandparents,GGrandparents ect......And before anyone points out I only have one name on my tree, I am talking about my free tree :) On Tribal I have stuck to the rule of direct ancestor and adding siblings. I trace the siblings wife's/husband's parents/grandparents back through the censuses (if it is that time frame) but stop there. I do also add the sibling's children but tend not to go any further down those lines in my recorded 'online' tree. However I do record record on paper what happened to them....I just don't make them available through an online resourse for them to be searched for. I work on the basis that if someone has got as far as a child and that child's parent was a sibling of one of my direct ancestor's they have probably made a connection but have exhausted the censuses for where our lines meet. So it is possible I could help them back, or fill in gaps, from that point. Hope that makes sense :) Chris

Thanks for the replies everyone. Michael, I have already passed lots of information on to other people, but think that the time has come to concentrate on my own family tree. Family Tree Maker does work out some of the more distant relations, cousins four times removed, for example. It also keeps in my husband relatives as related to me. At the end of my 'pruning' at least I know that all the people in there are conected to me. I had so many names in there before that I didn't know who they were! My tree had nearly 8,000 names in it at the start. It will be interesting to see how many I am left with.