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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Marmalady on Thursday 03 September 15 17:49 BST (UK)
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Someone is claiming to have the world's biggest family tree, having traced 22.000 ancestors
http://metro.co.uk/2015/09/02/does-this-man-have-the-worlds-biggest-family-tree-5373192/
Unfortunately the actual article does not give much detail on exactly who has been included -- is it all direct ancestors or lots of mere connection - instead latches onto "royal" connections such as being the Queen's 22nd cousin once removed and that William the Conqueror & Alfred the Great are also amongst his lineage
I am fairly selective about who I add to my trees -- rarely going more than one or teo generations down from siblings of direct ancestors -- but i have over 11,400 names when combining my maternal, paternal and husband's trees
How many names do you have and how selective are you ?
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Just over 1800 - that's maternal, paternal and husbands, although he is of Irish descent so that's been something of a struggle (had some wonderful help on here though.)
I do add all the children of a marriage, but don't tend to trace their individual families unless they are particularly interesting for some reason.
No royals and so far I've not found myself to be related to Her Majesty! Although my maternal great grandfather was the Duke of Beauforts gamekeeper.
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Someone is claiming to have the world's biggest family tree, having traced 22.000 ancestors
http://metro.co.uk/2015/09/02/does-this-man-have-the-worlds-biggest-family-tree-5373192/
He's claiming 10,000 not 22,000 so Marmalady your 11,400 is larger than his anyway. ;D
Now if he had 10,000 direct ancestors, without any siblings and their descendants, that may be something to shout about but I would imagine that would be a bit difficult to do. Mine is larger than that with all the sidelines we've followed forward. ;) And yes it is properly documented and sourced.
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Yes the link is somewhat confusing
The link as it showed up on Facebook said 22,000 ancestors, but the article itself said 10,000
Wonder if Guinness Book of Records would really be interested?
After all, don't we all have a similar number of direct ancestors (2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents etc etc) even if we don't actually know who they are?
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Marmalady,
That number changes when you take intermarriage into account. In my wife's tree, her parents are 4th cousins. It was when I discovered this that they didn't want to learn anymore! ::)
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Oh yes, I know that, Pine
But on average, I should think that we all have a very similar number -- and the further back you go, the more likely it is there are ancestors that appear at least twice in the direct line
My husband's Waterhouse line in particular is very convoluted - there are families where both parents and 3 out of 4 grandparents are all Waterhouse cousins - so that must cut down the number of his direct line ancestors considerably!
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Oh yes indeed! My father-in-law's maternal grandparents were first cousins.
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That's not a tree it's a forest ;D ;D ;D
Carol
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I suppose the other question is, how much of it is right? It's easy to get "world's biggest tree" if you name collect. Hell, I could just make up names and dates if I wanted to get a world record. On the other hand, if they verify it for you, that sure is one way of getting a second opinion lol
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While I will admit to tracing some lines of "gateway ancestors" back in time, I still believe that some of the early pedigrees may not be 100% accurate.
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I never counted mine!
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Had a quick look at my online tree, probably not up to date mind you. just over 4,500 individuals. At least all verified and confirmed. ;)
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"Size isn't everything"!
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What if you have a few Inches in your tree? ;D
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- There's no rule for that!
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I have "Miles", does that make my tree bigger than yours? ;D
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Come to think of it, OH has a clatter of Miles/Myles . .at least 5 of them - the name has died out in our bit of the family, but there are distant cousins.
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I agree that the largest ones are not always the best for accurate proven info. Some irresponsible folk seem to think that numbers instead of accuracy are what matters :-X
My tree (had 2 O/H's :-*) must be about 900 now but still have some "proving" to do.
Yes, sometimes I look at siblings families and some of the results have been very interesting and amusing.
So I will continue with my "twiglets"
Happy Families to you all ;D
Dorrie
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I have one fully researched tree 'gifted' to my by an aunt - containing hundreds/thousands - each personally researched, parish records consulted, everywhere visited in person, over 30 years. Most of it inaccessible to anybody who wasn't local and in two languages/three countries. It goes back to the 1300/1400s. Proper job.
Mine, that I've done "for free" contains about 150 people. But I'm 100% sure that 99% of it is spot on. But that just contains those I could find, not those I had to really 'research' as such. Oldest ones in there were born in about 1790-1800. Lazy bones effort :)
I'm stuck at finding out where these people who just "turned up and got married one day" came from, without father's names in PRs there's no clue. I went through an entire PR this morning, trying to tie them all together to try to nail any connection between anybody with the same name .... and ended up with a big chart of people who "just died there, without any other note", or "just married there, without any other note". My family are the main backbone of that parish record - having married there, they stayed and produced children there, who were baptised (allbeit with 3 spellings of their last name) and kept marrying/living there.... but where the first couple materialised from is still a mystery to be uncovered.
The tree goes back to my GGG-grandparents. At that point the man's upline stops. The female upline is still traceable back some more generations (quite easily).
So, overall, I grind to a halt about 1800 in most branches.
I'm sure when I do work it out I'll discover he's the son of William ..... because everybody else seems to be called William, or have married William ..... and called their sons William....
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"Size isn't everything"!
But I think it must be ...
Today I found a tree on anc* with 70,712 people :o
Amazing ... staggering
https://www.ancestry.com.au/connect/Profile/00cecb74-0001-0000-0000-000000000000
92,866 records
45,770 records
With a Smith pedigree reaching back to Thomas Smith Lord of Wellbourne d about 1541 Fenton Lincolnshire. ::)
The family in common with my research had 11 children living in 1911, the Godwins in Islington. ;D
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I never counted mine!
Same here. I put in all children of marriages and their own spouses where identifiable. That did tell me that my grandfather and his sister married siblings. So far I haven't found any inter-marriage and I have hit brick walls with just about every line now. Most lines stick in the late 18th century. I may be able to take one or two further back but it will mean old school searching at multiple record offices with no guarantee of results.
Recently I have been working on SWMBOs trees but again things stick in the 18th century. As farmers rather than labourers I could get one line back an extra generation but that was all. I have established that we have no common ancestors from the last 200 years.
Tracing collateral lines can be valuable. I only found reliable information on one ggg grandfather (died pre 1841) as his widow eventually moved out of the area to live with her daughter and son-in-law. If I hadn't had his surname in the tree I couldn't have matched the Scottish death certificate including his details to her.
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"Size isn't everything"!
But I think it must be ...
Today I found a tree on anc* with 70,712 people :o
Amazing ... staggering
>>>
92,866 records
45,770 records
>>>
The family in common with my research had 11 children living in 1911, the Godwins in Islington. ;D
And guess what ... drum roll ...
This tree has got my Godwin gal WRONG ;D
Best ever 8)
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How surprising!
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And guess what ... drum roll ...
This tree has got my Godwin gal WRONG ;D
Or you have?
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It was many years ago that I'd realised that I'd gone about as far back as I'm ever likely to go with my direct ancestors, either because they're back to the late 16th century or have fizzled out in the late 18th/early 19th centuries due to such common names, and moving around the country.
So - not wishing to give up the joy of the chase! - for almost the past 10 years, I've been following the descendants of my direct ancestors' siblings, ending up mainly with 3rd, 4th, 5th, though with better documented - which usually means better off - families that have gripped my interest, even as far as 10th cousins. It amuses me in my sad little existence that I can remind my 2nd cousin on my dad's side, who lives in Wimborne, that on my mum's side, I'm related to Lord Wimborne. :)
The upshot of this is that my tree currently has over 17500 individuals in it. All properly resourced and sourced.
One upshot of this, is making contact with 3rd, 4th, 5th cousins (mainly through Ancestry), who can then fill in more details about common ancestors, as many I've come across have been better record keepers and photograph keepers than my direct lines. Sometimes, it's also helped fill in those odd snippets of confused memory retailed by grandparents ("one of them went to Australia" sort of thing).
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Recently I have been working on SWMBOs trees but again things stick in the 18th century.
A glimpse into the mind of a genealogy geek: I'm trying to work out what SWMBOs means and my best bet is son's wife's mother's brother's others.
;D ;D ;D
(Okay, now I'll Google it, and find out what it really stands for.)
Regards,
Josephine
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Recently I have been working on SWMBOs trees but again things stick in the 18th century.
A glimpse into the mind of a genealogy geek: I'm trying to work out what SWMBOs means and my best bet is son's wife's mother's brother's others.
;D ;D ;D
(Okay, now I'll Google it, and find out what it really stands for.)
Regards,
Josephine
Clue: think "Rumpole"
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Thanks, Aulus. I'm in Canada and not familiar with Rumpole but I did Google the acronym after I posted, so I know what it means now.
:D
Regards,
Josephine
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I have never sat and counted people in my tree but I have them on ancestry automatically counts how many people I have on the trees I have stored there.
I record all my direct ancestors, I then record the siblings of each generation, who they married if applicable then eventually will research these lines forward. I tend to switch between trees I'm researching to keep my thinking fresh. I've been doing mine for 15 years and very lucky to have such a high proportion of Scottish ancestors as I can get a lot of easy to cross reference info cost effectively at NRH or SP Centres now. Hubby's tree is very much in it's infancy and has 54 people but tbh I see potential for there to be 20K people in it one day although that may be the person who takes over from me who reaches that point. The 54 I have are just my MIL's father's side so far. My MIL has 17 siblings her dad had at least 6. If this pattern continues there will be 100s/1000s more.
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"Size isn't everything"!
But I think it must be ...
Today I found a tree on anc* with 70,712 people :o
https://www.ancestry.com.au/connect/Profile/00cecb74-0001-0000-0000-000000000000
That tree has grown somewhat to 104,384 but it doesn't beat the one I've just come across with 161,380 People
http://www.rootschat.com/links/01qm0/
Annie
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Shortly after Ancestry went live there was a retired U.S. Colonel with close too 200,00 names. He died a notice was posted to his "tree" and a couple of years later the tree disappeared. He was my introduction to a name collector.
Don
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How many times have you heard people say "I've got back to "William The Conqueror" ::) I wonder where the evidence comes from, someone else's tree!
Carol
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That's what they do on WDYTYA, just the tree's from the National Archives
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That's what they do on WDYTYA, just the tree's from the National Archives
Wow, I didn't know that. I thought it would be more thorough!
My main tree currently stands at 3445 people according to the Tree Overview on Ancestry, however that is including my husband's family as well as mine, so it's sort of two trees in a way.
It's grown in recent years because I find that tracing siblings of your main antecedents can really give you an interesting insight into what was happening to the family. Inevitably that means adding the siblings' spouses, and their children, so before you know it that's a lot of people.
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The link I posted with 161,380 people (http://www.rootschat.com/links/01qm0/)
If you click on the actual tree, it's evident this is only the paternal line!
Annie
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161,380 .... wow .... does that indicate that they now know how to copy and paste .... BUT what if their first attempt at copy paste was for the 'Wrong' set of grandparents ..... ;D ;D ;D ....
JM