Genealogy Chat

I've found matches on trees and have been about to mail them when I realise the owner has 10,000 maybe 20,000 and one I saw with 66,000 people on it !! Why?!? Are they trying to work their way back to Adam ?!? Bit pointless trying to contact them really, it's obviously an illness :-D

If I contact someone about a match I always ask for their relationship to the person concerned. If they can explain the connection, they are usually genuine, but if all they do is open their tree without further explanation, then I am very suspicious.

I never open my own tree until the relationship is explained.

Wrong I know but people with that amount of relations I am inclined to ignore. Like Adeline says, even if you do ask connection they have no idea, often saying oh it is my husband's sister's aunt's stepfathers cousin lol.

Carol

With some people it's like a competition to see who can have the most in their tree - they're just name collectors. It is utterly meaningless.

I've just had contact with someone on Ancestry who has over 86,000. That's just sad.

I have around 600 people in mine, and everyone has been researched and is a direct connection.

Sadly it is all too easy to get a tree that large if you want to do it.

ie My g/grandparents both came from large familes 11+ children, so I add all the brides/grooms for all the siblings, then add all the incoming families and then add theirs and so on. It would not take long to get a tree with thousands of people in it. And if you go back further generations then even more people are added.

But that is not really Family History that is just tree growing and making an orchard of mixed genus of apples!!!!

I have had to contact a couple of family members on here and warn them about a person who has all our ancestors in their tree and is unable to tell you the connection as they just do not know. And the even odder thing is that of the 3 family members I have had to contact 2 are from Granddads family and 1 is from his wifes family. So 2 completely different branches of my tree. I think this person may have just followed a line down to gran or granddad and then gone back up the other line. :-S

Don't be so judgmental, Kevin.

There are lonely people who have no contact with living relations, who find comfort in having a 'family' in a tree on line

I second that Reggie

:-(