Ancestry tree: finding individual?

[Lisa in California]

When searching Ancestry for “Seaborn Smith”, born 1835, America, I came across a tree that includes this man and his wife.  Unfortunately, the tree has 14,000+ individuals and Seaborn is not a direct ancestor.  Is there an easy way to see where this man fits into the tree, please?

Added:  when viewing the tree, I extended the individuals born c1835 to view their siblings, in hope of finding a sibling with a connection to the Smiths.  I probably should have viewed the generation “above” (c1805) to find Smiths and will do so now.

[Ray T]

Open the tree and there should be a search box on the right hand side of the screen.

[Cell]

What I find really annoying  ,  and have done for years( unless I am missing  the obvious and there is this feature) when you press on a said name in someone's  tree that there isn't  any function  to show the relationships to  the home person ( or how they are supposed to be connected to the home person in the tree) . Ie steps ,an obvious path  back to the home person. 

For example  I have come across many trees that have my direct  relatives  in them  such as my grandmother and her parents , siblings  and so on but  for the life of me I can not work how on earth my relatives are connected to their home  person when are there are thousands upon thousands , upon thousands of names in their  tree  and the home person is  clearly not a close relative or none of the siblings of their  ancestors of each generation marrying a sibling of my family and so on.

I would love to see some type of clearly
marked path  ( or a tag saying 6th  cousin 5 times removed  in -law 100 times removed or  something lol )  from any given name in the tree back to the home person  in the trees, if you  know what  I mean. When a person's tree has zillions  of names and there is clearly no obvious  link  to the home person no matter how you look at  all their surrounding family, up down and wide, it's very hard, if not impossible a lot of the times  trying to discover  how that person  in their  tree is  connected to their home person in the tree.

Kind regards. 

 

[Lisa in California]

Ray T, thank you very much for your interest and reply.  The only search box that I can see is “Find in Tree” which does allow me to search “List of all people” (and search for all Smiths in this case) but I cannot determine how Seaborn is related to the “home person” in the tree.   

Thank you, Cell, that is the problem that I am experiencing.  I thought perhaps it was just me missing the obvious.

Thank you both for trying to help.  I’ve found a 54 cM / 2 segments DNA match for the owner of the tree and my husband and I would like to determine how Seaborn fits into their tree.  Finding out more about the connection could (possibly immensely) help with another ancestral situation.

[AlanBoyd]

I’ve come across very large trees like this which are actually multiple unconnected trees in the same ‘document’. This can be done by adding a new person as a relative of someone in a tree and then editing the profile of the new addition to delete the relationship, creating a free-floating person. You can then build the tree of the new person as usual. Both trees will be there, but I believe that you can’t see them both at once, you have to switch between them by searching for individuals and then ‘view in tree’.

[Lisa in California]

Thank you, AlanBoyd.  That must be what happened here.  She also posted over 13,000 records and almost 5,000 media so it appears to be a very large document.

As mentioned, Seaborn is in my husband’s tree, and hubby isn’t at all interested in genealogy.  I think that I will give up this particular quest. I am actually trying to figure out if Seaborn (Smith is a made up surname) had an ancestor with a surname of Mumford.  There are a number of trees with Seaborn (and the tree owners share DNA with my husband); I think it would be a better use of time to continue searching their trees.

Thank you for the explanation and taking the time to post it; it is very interesting.

[martin hooper]

If you download a gedcom of the tree you can import it to your local family tree software (FTM, FH, Rootsmagic etc). Then you find relationships easily.

May not be practical with very large trees, I don't know.

Martin

[Lisa in California]

Martin, thank you very much for the suggestion.  My only trees are on paper and Ancestry.  I’ve been very interested in purchasing software so that I don’t have to rely on a pay site for my trees and can have an electronic tree.  Once I finally decide if I will purchase another iPad, laptop or computer, I will definitely look into purchasing family tree software.  At that time, I can download the gedcom.

Thank you again, Lisa

[Biggles50]

It is there already.

Open up his profile and it should say his relationship with the home person.

If it is not there assume he is in floating branch.

I have one floating branch following a Thruline that went wrong, and it shows no relationship to me when any profile in said branch is selected.