Genealogy Chat

it suddenly dawned on me..... who exactly should i add to my tree?? when ive found grandparents and ggparents ive then added ALL the siblings to my tree....is this right??? or am i being stupid?? or both??? kaz

Kaz It's your family tree you add who you want - as long as you know they are connected. Personally I am adding everyone I find because a) it gives a more complete picture - my grandma who was an only child with a step-mother obviously had a different home life from my grandfather who was one of 10. b) someone descended from one of these extras may see a name and contact you with info relevant to your direct line of descent. nell

I always add relations to our trees, you never know when it may help you. We found by a death certificate our link to the Simpkins in Bath Somerset 1790 by just a death certificate, we never thought we would as all the names ran in our family as well, but had no proof as ggg died before 1841 census but my ggg grandfathers daughter in law died in Bath with his sister who was looking after her at the time. Irene

I add everyone I can find. Even my gggg grandparents siblings and their husbands and families etc.

If they link to someone on the tree then I add them - which explains why I have about 8000 people. Still, it is nice, when someone contacts me, to say "you are actually my wife's fifth cousin, the connection goes up your line to xxxx and than down through yyyy etc to her. Peter

Not a stupid question at all! As others have said, it's entirely up to you who you add to your own tree, as long as you can demonstrate a connection somewhere. I add everyone who is a relation - i.e. cousins, 2nd cousins, 5th cousins twice removed, etc etc - this greatly increases your chances of contacting others who are researching your own direct lines, and besides which it is always great when you discover previously unknown living relations around the world. All blood-relatives are part of your tree and you have a certain percentage of genes in common with them all! The difficulty is deciding where to stop when you start adding the relatives of distant cousins - i.e. their in-law's families and their other lines of descent which are not connected directly to yourself. Before long, your tree can blow out into a large forest, or even an uncontrollable jungle! I generally just add the immediate family of cousins, i.e. their spouse and the spouse's parents and siblings. Sometimes however I break my own rule, for example if there is a nephew or niece in the same dwelling on a particular census I will follow back the unrelated line in order to establish where the nephew etc "fits in". But you have to stop somewhere, unless you're trying to connect everybody who ever lived to everybody else!