Do You Separate Your Research by Lineage or Ancestor?

[KnowledgeEnthusiast]

I currently have one tree that I have successfully used for many years which has 1800 people on it. I like this method because it is simpler and organises reports that can be generated easily.

I have seen others use different family tree projects or Gedcoms for a specific ancestor, surname or lineage. What are you thoughts on this? Do you do it? If so, what are the pros and cons?

[StevieSteve]

My impression is that more people want to merge separate projects into one than vice versa. And that it's trickier to do so.

The probable pros for separate files are that you can send reports/gedcoms to those who might not be interested in other parts of the tree. But software should be perfectably able to do that from a combined tree

[bibliotaphist]

I only have one database, containing my main tree (my children, all their ancestors and all relatives of ancestors) and a number of unconnected trees.

I can't see many advantages to having separate files for different lines. My software allows for reporting and export of any given subset of my tree...

...and if you had, say, two separate databases for different lines, would you not have to maintain all repositories, sources, citations, etc., twice over? Sounds like a recipe for inconsistency and duplication of effort. And what if one individual happens to appear in both lines?

[Mvann]

I have 5 seperate trees for a couple of reasons. Firstly, as I have some relatives doing other parts of the family, I was only going to do one part of the family originally. Since starting to do the others, when discussing or asking questions, I find it easier to refer to that family tree, Especialy when using the ancestry app for the phone. Another thing in favour of doing it this way is because I've used my great grandparents as a starting. Now the only disadvantage that may come later is that I have been in contact with a couple of people and it transpires that one person on his tree has relatives of mine from three different trees and another person has relatives that connect to two different trees. I have also come accross a couple of surnames on different trees that may be connected. No definate links yet though.

[Guy Etchells]

I have a number of trees but have one main one for mmy family and others for various villages I am interested in etc.

Cheers
Guy