I’m occasionally asked how genealogy researchers should split up their family trees. Should they have a separate tree for each parent’s line? Each grandparent’s line? Just one tree?
It’s a question that I didn’t even consider when I set up my family tree in Reunion (the genealogy software I use on my Mac) and in Ancestry. To me, it made sense to start with myself and just work my way up one tree.
(If I were doing my husband’s tree, which may happen some day, I would have a separate tree for him, since our ancestors come from completely different places and have no relevance to one another.)
One thing I like about having all my ancestors together in one tree is that I can easily access a different ancestor if I’m chasing a clue. I use the quickbar button at the top of the Family View for instant access to my most researched ancestors. Or if a name seems familiar, but I’m not sure it’s my person, a quick search will reveal where that person resides in my tree. It’s easy and it works for me.
All that said, I have only 570 people in my tree. (Only verified people with cited source documents I’ve seen are added to my tree, which is my excuse for that number being so small.) If I had a much larger tree, perhaps I’d be singing a different tune.
So I’m curious: How many trees do you have? How have you divided them up? Do you have any regrets?
Unmodified photo by Nichole Renee via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.
I have one tree which includes my family as well as my husband’s with our eldest child as the root person. I use Family Tree Maker. I’ve only just over 3000 persons with the direct ancestors verified. Never had a problem with this method and so much easier for me to keep it all in one file.
Thank you, Wendy! It’s good to know that I probably won’t have a problem with having only one tree when my tree gets bigger. It makes perfect sense to me to have your eldest child as the base person for the tree. (That’s something I hadn’t thought about since I don’t have kids.) I appreciate your comment!
I have 4 trees. 2 for my husband’s parents & 2 for my parents. I have found though that 3 of the trees crisscross each other. I have 12,000 people on my trees so it gets a bit crazy. Some of my lines go back to 400 bc. These linew for the record are noble or royal lines & have documentation already done.
Ihave had several trees for various persons that I help. I am now down to two trees and everytime that I switch from one to the other , I wish that I only had one. I have merged several trees in Family Tree Maker in the past and regardless of their explanation of how easy it was to accomplish…I have had duplication problems and dropped media etc every time. If I was starting again, I would have one tree only.
Roger, thanks for confirming my original thought. Sorry to hear it’s somewhat difficult to merge trees in FTM.
I have only one tree, with my daughters as the root person (I’ve moved it back and forth between them). I find it easier to have everything together in one tree. Even though there is no overlap between our lines, I like having it together. I have 7100 people (some not sourced that I collected when just starting out).
Thanks for commenting, Lisa. It’s nice to hear that you have no trouble with such a large, single tree!
I have often wondered how I should set up my Ancestry tree. Separate trees for Mom’s family and separate tree for Dads’s? I definitely think I will separate my tree from husbands tree(his is very large)….but haven’t figured out how to transfer all that info.
Any suggestions?
Thanks, Suzi
I’m not sure I understand your question completely, Suzi, but could you export a GEDCOM for your line or your husband’s and use it to start a new tree?
I have two trees – one for my husband’s side of the family and one for mine. None of the lines comes anywhere close to intertwining!
Yep, that’s how I think it will work for me if I start working on my husband’s family. Thanks for weighing in.
I have one tree including both my and my wife’s ancestry, with our eldest child as the root person. I can easily isolate any segment of the tree for special use by creating a GEDCOM of the individuals I want to include in the separate tree. I am a longtime user of RootsMagic.
Thanks, John, for the reminder that exporting a GEDCOM is an easy to way to separate a certain segment of the tree.
I have also created a GEDCOM of limited individuals, in order to have a simple “ancestors only” tree to post in connection with DNA testing. [However, I found that many of my DNA cousins haven’t researched their lines back far enough to make the connection without a tree showing descendants of our mutual ancestors.)
I have one tree in Reunion for my own family tree and then a separate one for my one name study which has multiple families – unconnected. I find that I can group them easily using the suffix option in Reunion. I just give each family group a different suffix then use the search tool to find everyone with that suffix
Oh my gosh, that’s a brilliant use of the suffix option in Reunion! If you felt like sharing a GEDCOM with me (no pressure), I’d love to see your name study tree with unconnected families. Thanks so much for your comment.
I’m in the process of creating a website to document all these families who share my surname. I did start a blog but it’s a bit ugly at the moment though it has a few trees on there https://heenanfootsteps.wordpress.com/heenan-family-trees/
Where do I send the gedcom?
Please send it to janine@organizeyourfamilyhistory.com. Thanks!
I have one tree in Family Tree Maker with all my ancestors and my ex-husband’s family and my sister’s husband’s family, etc…i.e. all the in-laws included. It would be too difficult to separate them out. I have about 6100 people in it and everything is sourced. I am the root person because I like to see how I am related to everyone I enter. When I do genealogy for other people, I create separate sourced trees and files for them.
Thanks, Jane! That makes sense to me.
I have four trees in Reunion that I created over the past 20 years or so. They represent country of origin: one tree for my mother’s Swedish heritage, and three trees for my father’s German, Czech (Bohemian), and Czech (Moravian) heritage. At times I would have preferred to have one tree but at other times the four distinct groups seemed easier to manage. I had to combine tree information on Ancestry.com, since only one tree can be associated with my DNA.
That’s an interesting way to divide things up, Linda. Thanks for sharing.
I have only one tree on Ancestral Quest with over 15000 folks (all sourced, but many not verified!). As my family is all from the same area, it did not make sense to split it. I even have a few unrelated family friends thrown in. No problems working with such a large tree in AQ and this way, if I see a familiar surname, I can easily check all sides of the family for a possible relationship.
It would appear I am different from your other readers as I have multiple trees: one for EACH SURNAME for me, my husband (as well as his son’s Mom’s and his two daughters’ Mom’s families), my daughters’ father, both my granddaughters’ fathers and each granddaughter’s children’s fathers’ (only two more sets of surnames for the 4 great grand-monsters). I consider these to all be direct surnames, as I do not add more than the spouse and parents of an indirect person (aunts, uncles, etc. to any of my trees) That is usually enough information for me to identify a more distant cousin.
While this may seem insane (my father’s paternal grandmother’s side alone contributed 654 surnames so far), each surname starts with the person who was the first of that name and follows their ancestors back. I can easily send a specific gedcom file to a new cousin without cluttering up the information with people not related to that new cousin. The cousins on my Mom’s side have no interest in my Dad’s families, and my cousins on my Dad’s side certainly aren’t interested in my Mom’s families.
That said, there will always be some duplicates if you go back far enough. My husband and I both have cousins who married cousins in our various lines and they will have the same ancestors within a couple of generations. In researching two of my families, I identified my husband ‘s many times great grandmother as the full sister of my two recently documented many times great grandmothers (who were also full sisters) so we are also cousins!
The important point is that I can find the information needed on a specific person without having to wade through all the unrelated people. As a new spouse is added, I add their parents, then start a new tree for that surname. It works for me and helps keep me focused. Sorry for the long post!
The one big downside I have to multiple trees is that unless they can be linked you have to update everywhere the person is mentioned. This can’t be done to my knowledge on Ancestry.com. Where I had three USA. International and merged master. Didn’t work out as planned.
Jerry
I have gone from one to 2 and back to one. I find it easier if all is together and especially if i want to upload a GEDCOM file to Gedmatch. I have about 1500 people but i can see this growing but will want to stop before i reach 10000+!!! I know people say they only put close relatives on the tree but I am finding that I put my DNA match cousins on as well, if we can verify. They are afterall a family member ie 2nd and 3rd cousins. I also can export a branch and set up another tree if I want to work specifically on finding new people or if I havent verified or want to guess where people might fit in.
I have several separate trees and like it that way. I have one for each of my Dad’s parents, same for my Mom’s and my husband’s too. I also have set up a separate tree for my sweet dil who is a budding genealogist.
I like having my trees separate so that I can have my Ancestry hints separated. I also like to invite different non genealogist cousins to view my trees. If they had to wade through tons and tons of non relative ancestors they would never be bothered to navigate and give up. Then I’d lose their interest and that’s not a good thing for me! I like having my cousins involved in my research.
You have to work with what makes you most comfortable. Enjoy the journey!!
Thanks so much for sharing your perspective, Linda! you’re absolutely right–work with what makes you most comfortable. (And enjoy the journey!)
I have one tree in Family Tree Maker. I tried doing separate trees, but then grandchildren and now great-grandchildren, so I went back to one. This way I can see how everyone is connected and if needed, can print out a pedigree for any one of my descendants!
Thanks, Cynthia!
Hello,
So far, I have one large tree – the paper design goes back 10 generations. Most of the lines are back 6-8 lines, with only one being at 10, and another being at 4.
That being said, each person has their own file or 3 ring binder for all the info and documents. I note on the front of each file or binder their dates, who the parents were and who the spouse was. This may sound old fashioned in our technology filled lives, but I work on computers all day and I want to use tried and true methods for organization.
However, for research, I use both old fashioned paper methods and the internet.
I took on your 30 day challenge for April. I imagine most people took that to mean organizing documents, I took it as time to do something about all the family photos I inherited from grandma and mom – to the tune of (at last count) over 20,000 of them going back to the Civil War. My husband has been scanning them into the computer for me, but they are all in a file labeled “family pics”. This month I am making files by years and putting the photos in the correct file. Also, the photos are unlabeled so that is part of organizing them.
I am thinking this project will go on for years, but each day at 30 mins a day I am seeing progress.
El
I’m so glad that you’ve found the 30 minutes a day challenge to be so helpful, El!
Thank you for the challenge. There is something very satisfying about setting the timer on the stove for 30 mins and knowing when it goes off that a few more photos will be labeled and filed. I can actually find some of them now!!
I have a tree for me and a tree for my husband. However, I’ve also created a tree for one county that my ancestors are from because I kept running across the same names over and over so I finally decided to see whether I could link people up. Using only documents on Ancestry, I have over 3000 individuals, most of whom are interrelated through various series of marriages and things. I included anybody who was named, whether related or not, so there are some unattached families and individuals in there. It was a very useful exercise to see interrelations over generations in one location and what new move-ins or move out happened. And when moves happened, others usually followed, either in from the former counties of residence or out to the new counties or states. Not all moves were limited to family groups either.
Wow, that’s fascinating! Thanks for sharing.
I began by having multiple trees at Ancestry. I realized that I would prefer one tree for all of my family, and made the change. I’ve never regretted making that change! I do, however, have a separate tree for my husband’s family. And, I have multiple ‘private’ trees where I am trying to figure out ‘possibilities’ – sometimes to determine connections to DNA matches, or other ‘mysteries’ in the family. 🙂
I agree with the benefit of having private working tree files. This has been especially helpful in piecing together cluster research families and friends. I use Legacy Family Tree, which makes it easy to document unlinked families and individuals in the file.
This is a really interesting read. I have created 2 trees – one for my maternal ancestors and one for my paternal. I am finding that to be challenging – so many people in it with spouses and children.
One of the challenges of genealogy research is that more successful we are, the more overwhelmed we can feel by all our ancestors! I think that’s one of the reasons I love the software I use, Reunion. When I look at Family View, rather than Tree View, I see just one couple, with their children and their parents. (This may be true of other genealogy software as well.) It’s much less overwhelming for me.
Not sure if this topic is still being monitored, but just found it as the question is especially relevant for me now. I have always maintained a single tree in FamilyTreeMaker as it was easiest for me to jump around and I sync that tree to Ancestry. However, as I consider making my online tree visible to relatives, and as some of my relatives worry about privacy, I wonder if the benefit of the single tree is outweighed by the number of unrelated people who will then have access. Even though living people are less visible, there is so much data available that could allow for identification of living people. Also, the size of the one-tree is getting large enough (over 3000) that it could make it harder, without benefit, for people to navigate. I still don’t make my online tree public, but have benefited from others who have. It’s a quandry.
It’s definitely a quandary, Paul. I think maybe the answer is to get in touch with what’s important to you and make that the basis of your decision. Is it ease of use? Privacy protection? If you can figure that out, you might have your answer!