Genealogy Chat

Well i am totally astounded that i have had a reply back from a member who had a certain person in their tree who i thought could be related
"no connection just like to add names to my tree" can anyone enlighten as to why anyone would want to do this and are they copying from everyone elses tree?? :-S

Bonkers is a word that springs to mind! :-D

Commonly known as a name collector, and the "my trees bigger than yours brigade"

Roy

Bonkers is my thought roo.
There are some real odd balls out there.
One in particular, kept sending me the please give me access message.
I received it 5 or 6 times from this one person
I kept asking who we may have in common, but got no response other than the same automated message again.
I then realised that she had opened her tree to me and it was all her own Smith family.
Mine has dozens of Smiths too, but from a completely different part of Scotland.
I sent a polite PM explaining that we had no connection on our Smith families

For the first time, I got a "composed" message back.

It said simply.... " Of course we have things in common, for a start, we are both women"

What on earth is that all about???

I may be wrong, but surely you can only add someone to your tree if they are related to someone already on the tree.

Some desk top programmes do allow you to add unlinked people.
A Gedcom uploads to GR like this.

I possibly have one or two hangers on in my tree, due to deletion of a few families from my programme.
I think I missed one or two, who will now be unlinked to anyone else in the tree.

If someone marries into my tree I try if at all possible to add their parents and any siblings that person may have, comes in very useful if you lose someone on a census, you can then track their parents and siblings to see if they have visitors :-)

What really pees me off is the number of "dead" accounts GR seems to have, maybe I am unlucky, but out of every ten messages I send I am lucky if I receive two or three replies, the number of unopened sent messages is amazing i :-(

I don't understand it either. If you like researching then do your friends tree.

Having said that if a surname appears in both my maternal and paternal lines and they are living in the same area, I will research to see if there is a connection. Sometimes there is and sometimes there isn't.

This to me seems to be purely a case of adding in the family of spouses

Some people believe that once a family is married into theirs they become part of the extended family.

Not everyone does it, but some do and thus you can end up with a tree full of people not related at all, but a truly large tree full of people who you really have no interest in but are just there to make up the numbers.

I only add in these families if I find out they have someone or something interesting to add to the mix. But more often than not, they are never mentioned. I have enough trouble remembering the familial relations as it is, without adding strangers as well!!

:-D :-D

We are working from the same page PigletsPal.
Parents and siblings of a spouse are added to my tree but... it ends there.
I am not interested in their marriages ect, unless one of them married into my line too

I had one of those on Ancestry site and asked how they were
related to my mother, that was several years ago and am still
waiting for a reply.

Emma

There is one area of my tree that I honestly hope no one ever asks me about.

I don't think I could explain it, as the inter- marital relationships are sooo complicated yet in one way or another, they ARE all direct descendants of my direct ancestor!

It must have difficult to avoid incest!
Ist cousins ect did marry each other but they had other ancestors in common too,

I found this left as a comment on my tree.

The above were my grandparents. Mary was born in Philadelphia NOT Charlbury. She returned to England before 1881, leaving her widowed and remarried father in USA, to live with an Aunt in Charlbury. I believe that you have the wrong Harvey family attached to your tree . Yours seems to originate in the south of Dorset, and mine in the north.Most of the names and dates are completely unfamiliar to me, except for the odd common name such as George. I am confident that my research is correct as it is well documented.If I can be of assistance please contact me on

I have e-mailed the person concerned but no reply. His profile states he has 10 members to his tree and he has not used the site concerned for 3 months. If I am wrong I really want to know. I really don't quite understand what he has written. It leaves me feeling very disconcerted and questioning my research.
I don't know why he didn't contact me via the contact owner link
Maddie

Maddie,
Look at the date this dude put that message on your tree.
Was it placed within the last 3months?
Ancestry has been undergoing changes recently and according to them NO member has used the site in 3months or over.
I access my acct EVERY day, and if I look at my own profile, it would appear that....... I too last logged in 3months ago!

I received a message on Monday via the ANC messaging system, so the contact must have been logged in then.
I have just looked at her profile and it says she hasn't been on the site for 5months.??

thanks GlasgowLass, its a private tree as well. I think I will ignore until or I hear from them
:-)

Maddie

Whilst there are certainly 'Name Collectors' out there it is wrong to assume that everyone with large trees or unconnected branches fall into this category.

One of my interests is with what I term mini one-name studies. These are usually names which are connected to our family pedigree lines, either directly or by marriages and more often than not have a geographical connection too. By its very nature there will be several unconnected mini trees floating around as work progresses.

I find this very rewarding, I have made many contacts with other researchers over the years and have found distant cousins I wouldn't otherwise be aware of. Obviously until I win the lottery I can't buy certificates by the hundred but everything is checked out as far as possible using whatever data is available, parish records, the BMD indices and Census returns as a minimum.

Other trees can be a source of info but I insist on cross checking each bit of detail first before accepting it. I have yet to see a tree which doesn't have errors, one way or the other.

As mentioned, GR doesn't allow unconnected branches to be entered manually, but commercial tree programs do and also have quite sophisticated functionality to allow you to manage branches, relationships and connections as your research develops.

Going back to the 'last logged in' message.

Yesterday a contact 'accepted' a photo that had been uploaded. Looking at her profile thingy, it says she last logged on 3 months ago. :-S ;-)