General Chat

i only have 175 on my tree so ive got a lot of catching up to do

It depends on the definition of largest tree.

If you mean most names, then the number crunchers will tell you they have tens of thousands in their tree but most of those are obtained by finding someone with a common ancestor in the distant past and downloading all that person's tree as a gedcom. This will of course include many indirect branches of their trees and many people who are no blood relative to you.

If you mean by genuine research, IGI, parish records, PRO, census and you locate and verify every individual yourself then the number will be much lower, probably in the hundreds. But in my mind that is far more genuine (and Satisfying) than enourmous trees collated by the number cruncher's methods.

Thanks for all the replies - I take it there is no limit then on how many you can add - 78,000! as you all say though its the quality of the info, not the numbers that count.

i have over 4,200 people on mine that I have verified myself, even if I have access to other trees on here I just use their info as 'clues' and then verify it myself before adding to my tree. I also have plenty of information on all those people, with scans of death notices and photos were I can. Thats all gathered in little over 2 years but its been nearly a fulltime job on top of the one I have!

I once came across a man who had an ancestor with three wives and three separate families at the same time as he wasn't sure which one was right!

I was also confuse my Gedcoms at the start, I was scared that if I exported my tree that it would disappear off Genes. I'm glad it didn't...

IGP/ Spanish - I have my separate trees all on my genealogy soft ware - all data in one place but each tree separate. Worked for me since I began to load data on to PC some 20 years ago. Have changed the soft ware three times!

SpanishEyes
You can download your Genes tree onto your computer by exporting it in Gedcom format into virtually any family tree software which you have put onto your own computer.
Personally I use PAF (Personal Ancestry File) which is a free program from Familysearch and find that quite adequate.
My Genes tree has about 1,400 on it and I add selectively to that manually, but the PAF on at home has just over 3,000 names with much more detail.

Marin. Some people collect other peoples Trees just for the hell of it and to boast about how big their Tree is

Inspector Green, having noted what you say about NOT splitting the tree I hsve decided to leave my tree as it is. You hsve given such sensible tips and views in tha past.
Just one thing though, how do you put a family tree on a computer? I would like to do this but am afraid that I wool loose everything...

20.55hrs Spain

I have 2629 in my tree been 7 years getting that far, I thought the Toghills were only in Bath but they are all over the place.

Interesting though.

Awdrey.

I have access to a member's tree with over 50,000 names in it. My own tree on here has around 13,500 names in it..

When it comes to splitting, my advice is don't. Been there, done that and worn the T shirt. I now keep all my info on my PC using FTM (Family Tree Maker) This way I know where everything is and is also bang up to date.

By all means export cut down trees for other family members or researchers so they only get to see what they are interested in, but keep all your source info in one place.

Someone on here once let me look at their tree, and it had over 78,000, and growing. That was a couple of years ago, so gawd knows how many they have now.

Julia in Derbyshire

i have 7751 people in my tree....10yrs of hard work!!

I have 1669 on my tree and have tried to verify them all.
Chrisof wessex, I rather like the idea of splitting them into individual trees. I may consider that although when I down load them I do so by surnames so I have them to show each family.

I have seen many people with thousands of people and wonder how they manage to recall who they have!
I have been doing my research for quite a few years so my tree must be very small compared to others.

12.43 hrs Spain

I mistrust large numbers but then I do not number crunch! After 25 years I suppose if I added my trees the count would be aboout 5,000.

I keep all of mine separate e,.g,. my maiden name tree - OH appears in it as he has married me and I appear in his as I have married him! But I do not put his parents in mine nor mine in his etc.

I like to put flesh on bones etc - quality before quantity - but then each to their own.

Sorry Jill, I think our posts may have overlapped. I wasn't referring to your relative, although I can see that it may look like that. I was just replying to Martin.

Not same one or don't think so. Had no problem working out our kinship and sounds like a really nice person.

Message me his name if you want and I'll give you a definate.

Jill

I don't actually know but I suspect that it may be the man who has got an awful lot of my relatives on his tree; and, when I enquired how exactly he was related to my dad, my 4 grandparents, uncle Tom Cobley and all, replied that he didn't know exactly because his tree was so big! Gggrrr.

A distant cousin of mine has something under 50,000 on here. I'm nowhere near.

Jill

I was wondering what is the biggest size of a tree you can have on here and how many relations are in some of the biggest ones on here already? I expect they are massive but would be nice to know!