* Who should you add to your tree?

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GeneSniper
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Who should you add to your tree?

Post by GeneSniper »

Hi All,

I have always in the back of my head wondered this. Who should I be adding to my family tree? When I first started with FTM and Ancestry I went a bit mad and added anyone (probably like most peeps), just because I could. Once I settled in and thought a bit more about it, I realised I wasn't doing my family tree I was doing everyone's. I then started only adding: as an example my Father's brother (uncle blood related) his wife (aunt but not blood related), I also added her mother and father (not related in any way) because I always thought it would make it easier for other people researching using Ancestry to find connections into my tree if they had a mother, father & daughter to link to.

Now the reason for my question is that I am re-doing my tree and wondered if I should leave off these none related parents as they are not really part of my family. What view do you folks have about this? I understand that going down this route that my wife's family shouldn't really be on my tree as they are not blood relatives, but I made a bit of an exception here. I just wondered what you peeps do, one tree for you one tree for husband/wife or like myself one for both (I know the pitfalls of having separate trees and the advantages), but my reason for having a single tree is starting to fall apart a bit. My wife's family is my children's family, easy to use that as my reason for one tree, grand kids have came along and now my daughters partner's family are part of their tree, but nothing to do with mine and I really don't want to go down the road of adding them to MY family tree. Hence my dilemma of should my wife and I have separate trees.

I am not sure that I should have asked this question, because it has thrown up more questions in my head about who should and shouldn't be in my family tree. Any views on this?
William

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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by Valkrider »

William

There is no right or wrong way to do this like all things genealogical it is what works best for you. If you think about it what you are proposing is multiple trees. Your childrens tree would start with them and have both you and your wife in it but would it include their siblings? Whereas your tee would include you but would it include your children but without your wife?

However, don't forget pedigree collapse where ancestors from one line join another line in more than one place. If you have a tree with only your direct line ancestors in it then you will never record this.

I have everyone in my tree even my daughter in laws ancestors, I enjoy the research and I can easily share just an appropriate section of a tree with any branch of my tree with any interested person. As an aside to this even though I have been researching for over 30 years I recently contacted a first cousin of my elderly mothers who we knew nothing about until I contacted them through a tree I found on Ancestry. So you never know what you will find if you keep it all together.
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by gwilym'smum »

William
As Colin said there is no right or wrong way to conduct your research. My experience is, particularly as you go further back in time, you might not be actually related by blood to some of these people but there could be marriages within the family community which involve these people and without the research you will not be able to realize how the family/community interacted. Just an example. My grandmar's brother married a lady who had several sisters. They all married and had children. Some of these children were witnesses on my immediate family's records. I also grew up with their children and for 3/4 of a century these families were very close. This extended group may not have been related but they had an influence on my family and therefore I have research their families too.

For me family history is not just a list of names and dates but the joy of finding out how my family lived and that includes people who were close to them. In the past when perhaps parents died there was no social services so the children to avoid the workhouse would go to other people and these could include in laws or further away.

How you conduct your research and what you record is dependent on the way your interests take you.
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by GeneSniper »

Valkrider wrote: 08 May 2020 06:29 Your childrens tree would start with them and have both you and your wife in it but would it include their siblings? Whereas your tee would include you but would it include your children but without your wife?
In answer to these questions Colin. Siblings yes blood related, wife yes because she is my wife it would be her parents that wouldn't (Same would go for my wife's tree, me and the kids but not my parents).

I was more interested peoples views of going back generations of the not blood related side of a marriage. I kind of agree with you on your daughter-in-law, especially if they have children as they will be your grandchildren's family (even though I did say I didn't want to add my daughters partners family to my tree, well not at the moment anyway). I quite like the fluid way my tree moves, but I have been wondering lately whether I have put too much effort into parts of my tree that in the end are not really part of my family tree, they are just relatives of relatives.
William

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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by davidf »

Who you add to your FH project (a supplemented GEDCOM file) is a different question to who you should add to your "family tree".

I think of a family tree as a diagram (or text equivalent) showing relationships. The restrictions of 2D diagrams usually mean we produced ancestor or descendant diagrams (or some hybrid design). When preparing a diagram we may sometimes add unrelated people to it to help with context. So I have produced diagrams that show:
  • "1st broods" (where a widowed man with a family married a relative) showing unrelated children who are viewed as "family" by some relatives.
  • Showing family linkages to notable or interesting people (heros or villains!)
  • Showing "in law families" - where for instance I notice that two siblings married people with identical surnames - you can't not want to diagram how or whether those in-laws were related!
  • Family trees of business partners - you may find later marriages or the identity of executors etc.
If you take a broad view of trees (such as, for instance, those suggested above) you will have in your GEDCOM non-relatives. I will sometimes also include fragments of family tree of people who I have established are not related - if only to check that I do not chase those particular rabbits again!

Through my mother's adoptive family I am related to William Willett of "Daylight Saving" fame and I have blogged about him. Every year when the clocks go forward or back, it appears that people do internet searches and write asking "are we related?". Sometimes we are, sometimes not; but I keep all those fragments in my GEDCOM file even though they never make it into a family tree. Unless of course subsequent research finds an earlier common relative!

I cannot see a benefit in being "purist" saying "he/she is/is not a relative" therefore I will/will not include them.

Separate Projects. I do maintain a separate tree for my late mother's genetic family. I am not sure that her genetic father's family knew of her - although I have found quite a bit about them in FMP, Ancestry, Family Search, Newspapers etc. I am not willing to risk accidentally publishing something that means that family realise that great uncle X was a bit of a philanderer - they may not want to know and may well not want the world to know. So I keep that tree (and associated bits of "family shrubbery" / "Briar patch") in a separate file.

I think there is also a difference in how people use FH.

Some use it as a repository "of the proven" from which they can produce books / CDs / Websites at the click of an icon. Doing this is probably easier if you restrict the content of the GEDCOM to items that are relatively well proven and relevant to the publications to be produced.

Others (including myself) use FH as a means of holding structured information that can be drawn on, reviewed and discussed when "writing family history". For me something does not have to be "proven" to go into my GEDCOM; I have speculative lines in there - but marked as such so that when I come to write I can consider the current balance of probabilities.
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by johnmorrisoniom »

Like others, I always research everyone as far back as I can (I have over 80,000 individuals in my file).
From my own personal experience:
My Father's Uncle Doug, died in Blackpool in 2004. I knew all about his father, but almost nothing about his Mother.
I then found his mother's Parents which turned out to be one of my Father's family Brick walls. Doug's Maternal Grandmother turned out to be My Grandfather's Elder Sister.
Doug's Parents were 1st Cousins.
Regards
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by tatewise »

As others have said it is a personal choice of who you include.
From a purist perspective, it is virtually impossible to apply the blood relative only criteria, unless you can get DNA proof.
Certificates do not prove bloodline relatives.

It is called Family History because you are investigating the history of your family, and that includes family marriage partners, adoptive/foster parents, very close friends, relevant historical events, and so on.

In my view, it is very difficult to manage several overlapping family trees in separate Projects because there is too much duplicate data entry and you will miss common ancestors. So one Project for everything.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by Gowermick »

I eventually applied restrictions to my tree, as it was getting a bit silly, number wise. I was adding anyone who married into my family, then anyone who married into theirs etc etc.

To keep it simple, I now restrict my tree to anyone who potentially shares DNA with my grandsons (the roots of my tree) i.e. their direct ancestors and their descendants. I add spouses where appropriate, as their children will qualify on the DNA criteria, but not the spouse’s family.

As already mentioned, everyone does it differently, and there is no right or wrong way. :D
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by GeneSniper »

Mike L

As I said, I had always thought about this in the back of my head. It came to the fore a month or so ago when I watched a video and the person on it kind of described her tree as being similar to the way you have yours. My tree is similar but with the parents of the spouses (to help identify if the spouse you are looking at is the correct person for an online tree like ancestry) and I had been thinking of dropping them out of the tree and doing it like yours as it made sense to me. There would be some exceptions like adopted and step children who were integrated into the family. This was why I was asking other peoples views.

Moving my tree root to my grandchildren makes sense also, but then again I would have no excuse for not putting the out-laws (wife's family) on or having to start researching my daughters partner's family.
William

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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by Gowermick »

GeneSniper wrote: 08 May 2020 22:14 My tree is similar but with the parents of the spouses (to help identify if the spouse you are looking at is the correct person for an online tree like ancestry
I just add a note to the spouse, stating who his/her parents were for just that reason, but I don’t actually add them to my tree. The exception being where two siblings marry into my family. I then add their parents to show they are siblings :D
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by dewilkinson »

I also went through this torment. We used to add everyone including possibles and found that our 'tree' was getting far too unwieldy and the maintenance overhead was too great. So I made a decision to cull ancestors of people who marry into the family i.e. not blood related (unless siblings marry into our tree then they become a link), and like Gowermick I add a note recording who their parents were. This cull is an ongoing process as I get to them as I am slowly working backwards in time filling in gaps, tidying up citations and sentences. With over 25,00 people this is quite a time consuming task but the result is a great improvement.
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by mezentia »

My granddaughter is at the root of my tree. I have her father's ancestors, extending back into the dim and distant past in Scotland. I have her maternal grandmother's fairly ordinary ancesors. Then I have my lot: my biological mother's ancestors and descendents (biological father unknown); my adoptive mother's ancestors and descendents; my adoptive father's ancestors and descendents; my step-father's ancestors. If and when I can trace them, I will add my biological father's ancestors and my adpotive mother's adoptive parent's ancestors and descendents. I have a cousin whose great grandparents never married each other, but later married other people, so I have their descendents and ancestors . Wherever possible, I always try and get the parents of anyone who marries into the family, and their siblings. This is often useful when getting wills as bequests often span a wide variety of family members, and, indeed, generations.

I also have other projects that are single name or even single place studies.
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by Mark1834 »

My two pennies’ worth -

Separate trees for self and wife, as we grew up hundreds of miles apart and there is absolutely no overlap. I can combine them later if either of our children want to extend it in the future.

I include only the following:

1. Direct ancestors
2. Siblings of direct ancestors
3. Spouses of the above (but not their parents or siblings)
4. Children of the above (but not their subsequent families). Marriages are recorded as a note, particularly important for females to document change of surname.

Both trees are around 1000 people, which is probably about the natural limit given typical family sizes and the constraints above.

I recognise this is fewer than many on this forum, but for me knowing what a third cousin twice removed did loses the personal story of my family. I might as well read about it in a general history book. My trees generally stop at first cousins, although I have broken my own rules occasionally when there is a particularly interesting second cousin family to document.
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by davidf »

In defence of third cousins!

There is value in tracing back down from ancestors to your own generation +/-1. Often I find that by tracing down I discover 3rd 4th or even 5th cousins. Whilst I will not publish trees showing them (as they are living and not knowing them I feel it is a bit of a cheek just to say "it's all public domain"), I will publish details of their deceased ancestors (i.e. my cousins 2 or 3 times removed) either in an outline tree or in blog posts.

The result of this is that I get 3rd, 4th etc cousins contacting me because we are both researching the same distant ancestors. Want to break down a brick wall - get a second person working on it! In addition they may have "the family bible" or a photo album which has captions, or something obscure like estate accounts (where specific shares to a person or their heirs allows you to identify specific people).

There is a law of diminishing returns. Whilst I will research direct ancestors in detail, researching cousin lines is often limited to confirming vital data and key relationships; I will only research someone in a cousin line in detail if they appear "interesting" either for genealogical reasons or just because the individual has something of interest about them.
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by smithbruce »

A fascinating conversation.
I have multiple ancestry lines within my project.
Of course our parents' surnames were not the same before they married, neither were our grandparents., etc.
I add info on each of these lines and sublines as I get it.

Is there a way to display only a particular family line, rather than creating a separate project for them?
Might this be a helpful plugin, if there is not already away?
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by Gowermick »

Following on from my previous posts on this subject (was it really 2 years ago :D ?), I have since applied further restrictions on my tree, which now contains just direct ancestors, plus their own children (and spouses), removing their grandchildren, greatgrandchildren etc.
This has drastically reduced the people in my tree, but has made my research much more focused.

Someone previously mentioned that they treated different surnames as different lines, and considered putting these lines in different projects! It does beg the question why? They are all your ancestors, so I see no need to treat them separately.
If, at any point, you want to concentrate on one particular line, just pick the individual that starts the line, and choose to show the Ancestors diagram, et voila, your view is restricted to that line, simples :D
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by victor »

I tend to put names as long as there is a link to them even if not directly related tome.
FTM does a good description of names linking to me and example is
'uncle of wife of grand nephew of wife of 1st cousin twice times removed of Victor'
It is not doing an harm to the tree and wont show on narrative report of tree diagram whenone checks the 1st cousin one can see where the uncle is linked to the family
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by trevorrix »

Since the advent of autosomal DNA testing I am researching and recording all of my ancestral lines, all of their siblings, and all of the descendants of those people down to the present day. Such a huge task that I need to be focused and systematic.

I have almost finished researching (using primary records) and proving (at the initial level) all of my AncestryDNA predicted Common Ancestors - even the 6cM and 7cM matches which I preserved. I often spend hours, sometimes days, on each one. These distant matches are working out to be my 5th and 6th cousins.

Next I need to triangulate what I have discovered, using AncestryDNA genetic groups and Shared Matches, clustering, other DNA websites, DNA Painter and other tools.

Then repeat with my matches on other DNA datasets.

I think that's enough for the time being 🙂
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by JayBee »

Davidf mentioned marking speculative lines. How do you do this please?
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by trevorrix »

JayBee - I use the In Progress flag that I have set to display in diagrams a men at work icon and a heavy dotted border for the people concerned.
In Progress.JPG
In Progress.JPG (10.36 KiB) Viewed 6223 times
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by davidf »

JayBee wrote: 13 Apr 2022 09:07 Davidf mentioned marking speculative lines. How do you do this please?
That had me scuttling back through this thread!

Like Trevor I use a flag on individuals - which I also use to modify the border.

I have also been using "not Pool 1" as a means to modify the border.

These two treatments are distinct; I can have a speculative member of pool 1 - a very distant cousin may be claiming a relationship that I have not yet proved to my satisfaction (usually because I have not excluded other possibilities for a marriage partner or parentage - I am reluctant to rely on a single parish record). I can also have a certain record - where I am certain that the relationships documented all exist - but we don't yet have a Pool 1 relationship.

All this of course is "looking at the wrong thing". It's not individuals that are speculative (at least not usually) - it's a particular critical relationship that is speculative! But I most unsure how to manage that. The marriage status field and child relationship field would seem to be the "obvious" places to manage this - but they are I believe GEDCOM controlled - hence the pull down list of permitted values. There is the citation assessment field - but that is an indication of the reliability of the relationship between a fact and its source.

I would really like to be able to influence the relationship lines (spousal links and parental links) to indicate this "speculation" - but that could be too subtle. Imagine if one child (of a brood) has a relationship to parents in the tree that is speculative - it is only the final vertical drop-down line that is speculative (plus part of the horizontal sibling links if the child in question is the first or last of a brood).

In the Text Scheme you could add text (under the birth/baptism or marriage facts) using for instance:
Doubts: =GetLabelledText(%INDI.BIRT.SOUR.DATA.TEXT%,"Doubts:")
But that is not as visual and you risk implying illegitimacy - which may not be / probably isn't the case!
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by tatewise »

davidf wrote: 13 Apr 2022 11:59 The marriage status field and child relationship field would seem to be the "obvious" places to manage this - but they are I believe GEDCOM controlled - hence the pull down list of permitted values.
FYI: Some child relationship options for both Parents are specified by GEDCOM, but the separate options for Father and Mother are not, and Marriage Status is not specified by GEDCOM at all. Those additional features are custom FH extensions and thus potentially could be extended further.
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by davidf »

tatewise wrote: 13 Apr 2022 13:10 FYI: Some child relationship options for both Parents are specified by GEDCOM, but the separate options for Father and Mother are not, and Marriage Status is not specified by GEDCOM at all. Those additional features are custom FH extensions and thus potentially could be extended further.
Ah, might this give rise to a wish list item?

It is (at least to me) a two step issue:
1. Data capture
In the Closed Wish List requests I see something similar has been requested before in 2007 - More types of child/parent relationship To this could be added "More types of "family" relationships".
However I think that misses the point and conflates two issues - the type of relationship and the certainty with which we believe the type of relationship. I want to be able to record "Speculatively: adopted out (or in)" or "Possibly: married" - which implies a sub-field?

2. Representation on Diagrams and charts
See already Configurable line on Diagram based on relationship type
We can do things to individuals boxes based on expressions - which could use the results of (1) above - but really we want to depict something on the relationship link.
Ideally this should be configurable because we have other demands for what can be done with the relationship links - "Type of relationship" and "How Related" already and "DNA lines" already being discussed. The first already involves "dashing" The last two seem to involve colour and thickening of the line, so possibly dotting / dashing lines need to be configurable together with colour.
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by tatewise »

1. Data Capture
There already exists standard GEDCOM Note fields that could record the 'certainty' of relationships.
Both the 'Parents family' and 'Spouse family' data items allow local Notes or Note records to be attached.
e.g.
%INDI.FAMC[1].NOTE2% for birth parents, and %INDI.FAMC[2].NOTE2% for adoptive/foster parents
%INDI.FAMS[1].NOTE2% for 1st partner, and %INDI.FAMS[2].NOTE2% for 2nd partner, and so on.

I would recommend using labelled note text with a limited set of values that can be identified by expressions in such as queries and diagram box conditions. They can also have source citations if desired.

Those Note fields can be easily added to the Main tab of Property Box via the Customize Property Box option.

See also FH Help page How to Cite Sources for Relationships for related ideas.

2. Representation on Diagrams
I have updated Wish List Ref 18 Configurable line on Diagram based on relationship type to include all parent-child and partner/spouse relationships.
In the meantime, the features of the box of a person whose relationship is uncertain can be set by the Notes identified above.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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Re: Who should you add to your tree?

Post by davidf »

tatewise wrote: 13 Apr 2022 15:58 Both the 'Parents family' and 'Spouse family' data items allow local Notes or Note records to be attached.
e.g.
%INDI.FAMC[1].NOTE2% for birth parents, and %INDI.FAMC[2].NOTE2% for adoptive/foster parents
%INDI.FAMS[1].NOTE2% for 1st partner, and %INDI.FAMS[2].NOTE2% for 2nd partner, and so on.

I would recommend using labelled note text with a limited set of values that can be identified by expressions in such as queries and diagram box conditions. They can also have source citations if desired.

Those Note fields can be easily added to the Main tab of Property Box via the Customize Property Box option.
Yes, you can do a lot with notes and =GetLabelledText() - plus its V7 big brother, and they are exportable, but ...

It is a further layer of complication and if you have multiple "structured note lines" you can run into issues as to which source applies to which, so you are then into multiple notes (and probably using the "All" tab). If on top of that you start building expressions into box properties, I think you will start generating a lot of Forum queries that you will wearily answer by pointing to a fairly complex help page (or series of pages)!

And how do you customise the individual/parents' property box "Children" sub box to put the note close to the relationship field? I suspect a major restructuring to put the relationship of the individual to the parents and the associated note on the Individual's main property box tab is required.

To be honest we could just do it all with a text editor directly on the GEDCOM, but we use FH as a means to easily add information in a GEDCOM syntax compliant way.

The question is when do we find that there is a group (usually a small minority) who would find it sufficiently convenient to be able to "do something" that we look at "the easiest most direct way" to do achieve that end? "Notes" are a work-around; if you require a "piece of data" good practice says, surely, it should either be directly calculable (e.g. number of children) or should have its own field (e.g. certainty indicator)?
David
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