The Importance Of Having As Many People On Your Family Tree As You Can Get

How complete is your family tree? How many family lines have you explored

? Some people are only interested in having their direct ancestors listed on their tree. They don't want to muddy things up with a lot of other people who are not directly related to them. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you can find all of your direct ancestors.

As we all know, when researching a family tree you run across other distant relatives who have the same ancestors. Maybe they have more information on a few people that you didn't have. You use that information to build onto your tree and make it more complete.

What happens though when the trail of clues stop? If everyone who is researching that particular ancestor runs into the same stopping point, it is time to change your game plan.

Everyone has run into that brick wall where they just can't go back any further. For whatever reason, your ancestor cannot be found as a child. You don't know who their parents are. That is where it becomes important to have as many people on the tree as possible.

By exploring and documenting your ancestor's siblings you have opened yourself up to more avenues of finding that next step up.

Maybe your direct ancestor has never been found as a child but someone somewhere has found his brother or sister as a child. They have discovered something that you could not.

Think of it in terms of gambling. You want all the odds in your favor. The more people on your tree, the better your odds of success.

Besides relying on other people's research, there is also the fact that you now have one more person to find in all of those vital records you pour over. Maybe you can find your second great uncle in those records where your ancestor could not be found.

At first you may not realize the importance of having your second great grandfather's brother on the tree. You especially do not care to have his kids on there when you think about how distant a relation they are.

Your head starts spinning when you try to figure out what they are to you. Is it your second cousin thrice removed? You then begin to realize the more people you have on there, the better.

The odds have increased to get you to where you want to be. You want to go back as far as possible and these people are going to help you get there.

Use them wisely. There have been many times when I hit that wall and went up a different alley. You have to navigate the minefield of Genealogy. Know when to stop and know when to change course.

Keep in mind that family members generally stayed close together and migrated across the country together. Not to mention the fact that there were simply a lot less people on the earth back then.

Countless times I have gone to look up a person on a census report and found that at least one or two other families on the same page are related to each other. You started by looking up one person and now you have information on several. By documenting all of these relatives, you can keep track of things a lot better.

In the small communities your ancestors came from, they nearly all knew each other and married into each others family. A fun thing to look at if available in your area is a map that shows family farms.

It will show a map of all of the farms in a town and the owners of those farms. You will probably see that an ancestor on one side of your family lived just down the road a piece from another family member.

Recognizing the importance of looking at the extended family and the entire community are key to a good genealogist. As they say..."It takes a village".

by: Wendy Moyer

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