Genealogy Chat

Hello All,
I have a miniscule tree as I haven't been at this hobby long.
My own name was hot matched up and to my amazement and delight I found I was contacting my husband's 'unknown' cousin who just happened to know who he had married!
This has opened up a lovely connection so there can be a lot of luck in this game - like meeting the delightful people who are not remotely connected but will give a leg up in research and advice along the way
Thanks to all those people,
Jill

What the heck, another two cents from me.

A while back I found a grx3 grandmother of mine in someone's tree, and contacted her. It turned out she had just uploaded a multiple-thousand name tree to GR, and had received literally hundreds of contacts. She was answering each one and opening her tree.

I have no idea how we are related -- not at all, actually -- but somewhere in her tree someone connected with the family of my grx3 grandmother in Cornwall. And she had loads of info about them there. More than I'd ever bothered to find.

This was enormously helpful to me. (Well, except that I didn't bother copying it down, and I think she's taken the tree down, probably from being overwhelmed by contacts.)

This is her hobby. She has painstakingly researched every single name in her tree herself, from original records. I think that's terrific.

I would indeed not want to see my mum or my mum's father, let alone myself, in her tree. But she wasn't doing that -- just the oldies. Up the tree and back down - to a point.

So I look at it as: if someone wants to add second cousin twice removed's inlaws to a tree, fine, as long as the second cousin twice removed and everybody else included was born before 1900, say. So the tree is about *ancestors* and their relations, however related -- and anyone who has one of those ancestors may benefit from all that research, as I did.

I don't have the time or interest to do that kind of research, but I'm very glad someone does, and has organized it and makes it available to us lazier researchers.

Dear friends and fellow researchers,

Lets try not to get upset about this. We all do things differently and for different reasons. My tree has some obscure branches in it because cousins with deceased husbands have asked me to research their husband's families. I wouldn't have put them there otherwise.

I think there is a difference between adding relatives that you have researched yourself and agree with someone else's tree, and just taking the other person's research as accurate and adding it yourself. Though I have occasionally done that where I have determined that the person is a good researcher to my own standards.

I can't imagine ever getting to 36,000 names though, but maybe such people have been at it longer than I have.

I personally don't mind if people "steal" my names, so long as they realise that I am fallible and they do so at their own risk. I don't do the same in reverse as I don't feel this is a competition.

Love to you all

Margaret

Julie I did not mean you personally. i believe it was Christine who used a term like genewrongagist but the opinion of some is that a large tree is automatically a name hunter.
There are namehunters but you can tell them as they do are usually full of errors and assumptions.

You are entitled to build your tree as you want. I am just asking that people do not dismiss my tree just because it is large. If you do dismiss it you may find you have missed out on a gem relevant to your tree.

And I am not interested in adding info about living people.

You will find i haven't called you anything..and i wouldn't come to you for anything anyways i can look for myself
Like i said to Barbara respect others opinion...shame you can't respect mine

& if i want to mention heir hunters what that go to do with you

Anyways i done..this is boring..heard it all before

You can can choose who not to add to your tree but do not call me a genewrongagist or a namehunter for my choices, It may be your missing photo or original baptismal certificate I have inherited . It may be that I have found your missing link coming from another direction.

And what on earth has heirhunters got to do with it?

Barbara

I respect your opinion but in all honestly where do we stop........I was really peeved when i saw my Nan on their tree & they were saying that if anyone wanted to know anything about their family or their spouses just ask

Well they know nothing about my Nan......But the good thing to me was at least i know their info wasn't researched as my Nans sisters info was wrong...will i let them know.....I'll leave that for you to decide

Im not talking about the offspring though..im talking about someone so far removed it could be you, but that don't make you part of my family

Trust me if my Nan had anything for heir hunters to knock on peoples door they won't be knocking on that persons cos they are nothing to do with her....

I totally agree with you Elvie,


I have found lots of answeres to questions by researching around someone.
On many census returns I have discovered the boarder is actually the father in law ,step son or other relative.

This is a good example

Sarah Smith first marries Samuel. Has 3 children. Samuel dies young so Sarah remarries Alfred. More children. Sarah dies. Alfred remarries Julia. More children. Alfred dies. Julia remarries.
so on this census we have

1881 Address: 261 Pentonville Rd, St Pancras
FEATHERSTONE, Henry S Head Married M 26 Wood Sawyer
Shoreditch
Middlesex
FEATHERSTONE, Julia Wife Married F 36 Dress Maker
Newmarket
Suffolk
BESANT, Mary Aunt Widow F 74 Formerly Laundress
Over
Cambridgeshire
BESANT, John Step Son Single M 21 Tailor
Newmarket
Suffolk
BESANT (FEATHERSTONE), Rosa Step Daughter Single F 16
Imbecile St Lukes
Middlesex
BESANT (FEATHERSTONE), Alfred Step Son Single M 13 Scholar
St Lukes
Middlesex
SMITH, Arthur Nephew Single M 20 Butcher
Newmarket
Suffolk

Mary is Alfred's aunty. Recently I have had featherstones and Besants asking me to explain this family grouping. Mary certainly had livng children but she is with her dead husbands dead brothers wife.
I have certain pieces of the puzzle. Others have different pieces. By researching wide we can fit the pieces togethe. I was recently sent some pictures of my great grandmothers sister. They were sent by one of her descendants that I would not have found If I had not been researching "wide". When my father in law died I inherited a huge box of certificates photographs etc from his loft. Some of these came from the other deceased relatives and dated back a long way. By adding these to my tree I have been able to send documents other s. A lady who was the great aunt's husband's brother's descendant contacted me. I visited her with her elderly mother and showed her the photographs. When I showed Mum the picture of a sailor WW1 and a young lady I got enormous pleasure from her saying "ooh that is me and my husband" There were lots of pictures of my husbands grandparents with this lady's family because they were the cousins etc that his grand parents invited to thir special occasions.

There is a story in each of these lives.
If I try to record them and share them that does not make me a name collector or make my research wrong.
I do this because I love history and the story of peoples lives and working out how they relate to each other.
One of the things I love doing is tracing my family back to tiny villages.
I then try to find out as much about the Village as I can.
I study the relationships between the villagers which is often complex.
I try to put flesh and bones on to as many people as I can.
I then try to visit the villages and become familiar with the street names.
I am not able to take long holidays as my husband and I have our own business so we take long weekends.
How dare someone say that my research is not valid and wrong.

If Christine asked to see my tree would she discount any information she could find just because my tree is too big? She might be missing something valuable.
I have lots of trees open to me but I rarely look at them. If I do find anything on some elses tree I would double check it and confirm it for myself.

If someone chooses to follow bloodline then that is their choice and I will respect their choice but please do not dis respect my choice of following my interests.

Christine i agree with you 100%

i have a surname in my tree only through a marriage to my Aunt but someone who is very distantly related to the person with the surname has my Nan, her 2 sisters & parents in the tree........These people didn't put them on the this planet.....the mind boggles

Have to say I disagree with Christine - I will always consider people who marry into my family part of my family - and thus I want to know where they came from; my cousin married this year and I have added her husband and his parents to my tree. I also have her mother's parents on my tree, as well as her mother's sister and her mother's sister's children. They may not be my blood relatives, but I still count them as part of my family, because they are related to my family.

Some of us have been doing this long before the internet even started by trawling round record offices and graveyards, so to say someone with a lot of family in their trees is a show off is a bit harsh, Yes there are some who name collect but many have spent years establishing their family tree without the ease of the internet.


I have always used the search the name facility at the top of trees I have access to, I only follow their line I already have to double check their info is the same as mine.

thanks for info it,s all gobbly gook to me but my daughter will help me i have been in touch with gr many times and

have done every thing they asked but can,t rember this info so when daughter visit,s again i will get her to try this

thanks sally

Sally,

It is not necessarily a GR fault otherwise everyone would be seeing the same problem, which they are not.

Are you trying to say that your tree isn't displaying properly? Also, if the boxes where you enter data aren't working then it does sounds like your tree might not be loading fully on to your PC. Possibly, as I said earlier, because your browser has insufficient space available to hold its web pages.

If you haven't done so recently, clear your browser temp file folder, and try again.

You do this through Tools, Internet Options, General Tab, then click on delete browsing history, middle of the dialogue box. Follow th prompts. Best to keep cookies for now otherwise you may loose some of your log-in passwords favourites.

Then click on settings and check the amount of disk space allocated for web files. I have mine set at the maximum for IE8 which is 1024mb but If you have an earlier browser then the limit might be smaller. Increase it to the maximum allowed.

Close your browser and preferably shut down your pc altogether and re-start it.

No guarantees but this has worked for several members who have reported problems loading trees.

hello oh how i agree since gr (improved) the site months ago i can,t use my tree very well i don,t know what family,s are lincked whoose gran or geandaughter or great aunt or great neice

the box where you put the names in does not work and guess what gr dose not care

sally

I have a contact with 25,468 relations and her tree loads in less than ten seconds.

If you are finding a tree won't load then clear out your temp files and try again.

If you have an old browser and ops system (i.e pre- XP or IE 8) then you could try increasing the amount of space your browser allocates for its web files.

Does anone else have trouble downloading large trees?? I have one tree with nearly 23,000 names on that I have never yet seen.

That's all very well as long as they give a connection name when offering their tree. I recently had an offer from a chap who has over 6,600 names and then he had the cheek to put on his own notes that he was not to be contacted for any information! I'm sure he's just doing a lot of "fishing" as he seems to be adding names like there's no tomorrow.
Betty

I absolutely agree with Annina, and losing the will to live describes it perfectly!

Ladykira's suggestion works for finding the person in question, but the problem is still there, just in reverse.

Starting from the bottom, you don't know which links in the chain to follow upward. Starting from the top (the person in question - if you know who it is), you don't know which links to follow down!

If you look at the top of the tree there are two white boxes. This is a search function. You can just type in the surname, or both names. It is exact spelling though. If you use an exact date it will only find the exact date which is fine if both parties have it. I usually leave out the year. When the list of possibilities comes up click on the selected name.