I have several separate trees in my database. The first one encompasses 99,9 % of my people. The second one (69 people) is linked to a lady, 9th in a family of 10. Why is she the one mentioned and not her father (who is also part of my database).
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There may be some difference of opinion on this topic. Also from jargon POV people sometimes use Trees/database etc interchangeably. I have about 10 years in my RM10 database. Half due to Associations, Main ātreeā with 99.8% . The others have most less than 10 and 2 larger ones. My thought is that like to leave them in unless I have proven they do no belong. you often find connections later. Your tree is impressive in that all your people have FamSearch connections.
Kevin
While different people may view the term ātreeā in various ways, RMās Count Trees tool has a precise definition of being in the same tree. Namely, two individuals are in the same tree if they are connected. Connected means that you can get from one individual to the other by following any combination of these links: spouse to spouse, child to parent, and parent to child.
For example, suppose you have a first cousin Sarah. You are connected to Sarah by linking up to your parents, by linking up to your grandparents, by linking down to Sarahās parents, and by linking down to Sarah. So you are in the same tree as Sarah.
Sarah is married to Joe so they are linked as spousesā¦ You can link from Sarah to Joe by using their links as spouses. You are related to Sarah and you are not related to Joe. Nevertheless, you link to Joe by following all the links Iāve already described, first from you to Sarah and then from Sarah to Joe.
Joe was married previously to Jane so you can get to Joe from Jane by following their spouse link. You can get from you to Jane by following the links Sarah, then to Joe, then to Jane.
So in general, if you can get from one person to another by following links, then the two people are in the same tree. It doesnāt matter how convoluated the links are. If you can follow some combination of links and get there, the two people are in the same tree. If there is no possible combination of links between two people, then they are not in the same tree. At least thatās the way it works for Count Trees.
By contrast, a ātreeā in Ancestry can actually contain people who are unconnected in any way. So by the RMās Count Trees definition, one Ancestry tree could possibly contain more than one tree.
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I think I can understand this, but I donāt see why the tree refers to āan arbitraryā(?) person in the tree and not the eldest person in that tree.
It sows the person with the lowest RIN
Thank you Jerry (thejerrybryan), confirming - in terms even my brain can understand - the āconnectedā criteria for a separate tree. Iāll be sure to keep your explanation close at hand for future reference.
RMās Count Trees has identified two main trees in one of my databases, each tree has a few hundred people. Not many perhaps, but I prefer to dig deep and find out as much as I can about individual lives rather than just accumulate basic facts about lots of people.
Iām always looking for ways of connecting these two trees together, partly because the most interesting individuals seem to be in the āotherā tree (not the one Iām in !!). But does it really matter? Even the unconnected people somehow feel close enough for me to include them in my database. For example they, their spouses or their close relatives share a common surname with earlier generations of my wider family, or perhaps they lived in the same place, appeared in the same photograph, etc.
Is what Iām doing consistent with established good practice, or would a purist consider it a mistake to research and document people who have a tenuous link at best - or maybe no link at all?
I havenāt, as yet, used RMās Associations feature to create a create any relationship(s) between my two trees. Perhaps I should do that?
Iād be interested to hear other opinions on this.
Some purist ( at least some that I have dealt with) MIGHT record all the info they can find on another line with the same name IF they suspect a relationship but would never connect them till they had a rock solid piece of evidence such as a will etc-- for example a woman and I traded info on our Green lines ā they started out in the same county in VA with our Sam Green listed on a 1764 tithe/ tax list as living with the brother of their ancestors-- there were no marriages between the 2 lines BUT there was a 150 year ( at least) association between the 2 linesāmoving from place to place etc-- never could find a document to prove the relationship BUT DNA proved itā¦
Other purist ( that Iāve talked to) will only enter the info for their DIRECT LINEAGEā wonāt even add the siblings of the ancestors much less the half-siblings or step siblingsā¦
On the other hand, I usually record all the kids, half sibling, step kids and a little on the spouses lines as time and time again, I have found where the step-kidās grandchild married one of the kidās grandchild ( or the spouse great niece) ā I researched 2 menāone with the same name as my g-grandmaās 2nd hubby as I had nothing on him before the marriage ( turned out to be 2 different guys) and then a guy who had the same unique 1st / last name as my g-grandfatherā he could be g-grampās son by a 1st wife-- just canāt prove it
So basically there are no fast and hard rulesājust whatever you want and have the time to doā¦
The āFAN clubā (Family & Friends, Associates, Neighbors) is the key to success, if by success you mean insight into the lives of our ancestors. That is my definition too!
Numerous trees in a database causes no problems. I have hundreds of trees within my database, initially showing up when I transcribed basic genealogy volumes such as āFamilies of Ancient New Havenā into my database. I initially did this 20 years back to provide information online (in a shared database) to others researching early Connecticut history. Now that companies such as Ancestry have indexed basic genealogy texts, I probably will not transcribe more books. Additionally I have a number of single name studies, trying to find connections to particular surnames. That has resulted in more unlinked trees. I also keep research I do for people not related to me in the database. The bottom line, everyone can put what they want in their database.
Maybe my situation is different, or maybe similar. By a strange situation in Ancestry.com, I ended up with one more complete āDNAā tree with DNA facts & all my DNA matches thus far fitting into the tree. Another tree, almost but not (maybe?) as complete, the āNewā tree. In RM I would like to download the New tree and merge it into the DNA tree, merging duplicates as I do. It might take me years, IF it is possible. Is it possible? If so, how to best go about it? I have a newly updated RM in a new Windows drive on my linux computer. I didnāt want to fight with WINE in Linux any more.
Yes, you can do the merge in RM. It can be tedious and I will describe a bit about how to do it below. Unless your DNA tree and your New tree are enormous, the merge of the databases in RM shouldnāt take years, even if it seems tedious. But the larger question is going to be how the Merged RM database is related the two trees at Ancestry.
One RM database can only be linked to one tree at Ancestry. So how did you picture this ending up?
- The Merged database in RM not linked to a tree at Ancestry?
- The Merged database in RM linked to both the DNA tree in Ancestry and the New tree at Ancestry? As I said, this is impossible.
- The Merged database in RM linked to the DNA tree at Ancestry?
- The Merged database in RM linked to the New tree at Ancestry?
- The Merged database in RM linked to a new Merged tree at Ancestry?
I suspect the only way to have your Merged RM database linked to an Ancestry tree which includes all your DNA matches is to end up with the Merged RM database linked to the original DNA tree at Ancestry. But I could be wrong about that point, and I would love for other RM users with expertise on DNA matches at Ancestry to chime in. I do have DNA matches at Ancestry, but I have never done much with them.
There is more than one way to go about the merge in RM. Here is how I would do it.
- Make a copy of your DNA database in RM which you call Merged. This is assuming you have a DNA database in RM which matches your DNA tree at Ancestry, which you can accomplish with TreeShare. Make the copy using the File > Copy tool in RM. At this point, both your DNA database in RM and your Merged database in RM will be linked to the DNA tree at Ancestry. This is a legal situation.
- Drag and Drop your New database in RM into the Merged database in RM. This is assuming you have a New database in RM which matches your New tree at Ancestry, which you can accomplish with TreeShare.
- Run RMās Duplicate Search Merge tool in the Merged database. This merges duplicate people, one duplicate pair at a time. It is not automagical, nor do I think you want it to be in your situation. For each duplicate pair to be merged, keep the person who is in your DNA database and let the person who is in your new database be the one who is merged out of existence. No data from either person will be lost. Itās a manual process on your part to clean up any resulting differences such as two slightly different birth dates for the same person. As I said, RMās merge process will keep both birth facts in this situation and leave it to you to clean up.
- Your Merged database will still be linked to your DNA database at Ancestry. If you wish, you can then use TreeShare to update your DNA tree at Ancestry to match your Merged database in RM. This will also be a very tedious process, perhaps even more tedious than was the merge process in RM.
The process I have outlined is based on my guess about your final goals, and itās also based on trying to do the merge while maintaining all your DNA match info at Ancestry. There may be better ways, or you may have different goals than I have guessed. Iām hoping other RM users will chime in with further suggestions.
not quite arbitrary ā RM refers to the lowest RIN/ RMID in that ābroken branchā ā this assumes you added them first so the is the logic involved.
As previously mentioned, RM simply picks the person in each ātreeā that has the smallest record number as the representative for that ātreeā. But there are deeper issues.
- When, you run RMās Count Trees tool, there may not be a single person who is the eldest person for a given ātreeā. Indeed, suppose your database only has one ātreeā and suppose you have have many of your ancestral lines in your database. And suppose you run RMās Count Trees tool. Which of your most distant ancestors should RM pick as the representative for the ātreeā? There is no basis for choosing one over the other. Itās not like there is a single descendant tree with a single ancestral couple.
- I keep putting ātreeā in quotes, because the ātreesā counted by RMās Count Trees tools are more like bushes. But calling the tool the Count Bushes tool doesnāt have quite the same panache. Imagine for example creating a new database where you enter yourself and your ancestors, your spouse and their ancestors, but none of your children or grandchildren. The result is that you have your ancestral tree and your spouseās ancestral tree which in some sense is two trees. But if you run RMās Count Trees tool, the result will be just one ātreeā. Itās this structure that Iām saying is more like a bush. To make it into a true tree, you would have to add one of your children in then it would be a true tree instead of a bush.
So that upshot is that RMās Count Trees tool is following ancestral and descendant links, and doing so as very tree-like. But RMās Count Trees tool is also following spouse links, and doing so is very bush-like. Trees have a unique ancestral person (or at least an unique ancestral couple). Bushes do not. RMās Count Trees tool really counting bushes, so there usually is not a well defined person to choose to be the representative for most of the bushes that are being counted.
Also, it depends on how far you follow these bushes. If I have a cousin with a spouse who had a previous spouse, I will enter the previous spouse for the spouse. But I wonāt enter a spouse of a spouse of a spouse. Thatās a bridge too far. But it takes very little in the way of adding people to a spouse to make a bush. All you have to do is to add the cousinās spouseās parents.
I wish there were better ways to do this within the RM UI ā I have a script method (not recommended by RM) that colors both set1 & set2 ā set2 by degrees (distance based off the relate1 & relate2 values) and set1 by ākinshipā including immediate in-laws of cousins by marr (Parent in law and sibling in laws) it also does immediate addl spouses of Aunt/Uncles/Cousins (over 20 colors for those variances) then it colors anyone remaining Azure ā this means this should be a hard stop in most cases ā this prevents me from getting ālostā
Agreed. I was just doing some searches yesterday at Ancestry where I was searching for a person based on the names of their spouse, their parents, and/or their children. Thatās the sort of function thatās missing from Advanced Search in the RM user interface. By the way, the tools Iām talking about in Ancestry are far from perfect and they are not a panacea, but they are much better than nothing when it comes to search by relationship.
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