I'm in the middle of building a family tree on Geni.com and started to wonder, considering how relativly small the frum world is, how many of us could manage to connect our trees?
If everyone here builds a tree, and puts all their cousins cousins, in laws and their in laws, as far out as they can go, how many trees do you think we can connect?

My tree has something like 10,000 people. It's the largest or second to largest tree on Geni.

Ours has 14,500. But how do you know which family tree is the largest? You can't see info on any family tree besides your own.

Wooow. I thought mine was big with 120 members... (I just started though and still have plenty more to add)

i started this morning when you posted the website and i'm up to 111 people. it only went back about 4 generations, i can't remember more offhand. there are also a lot of missing cousins and spouses that i don't know their names.

i like the cycle feature where they let you connect the same person twice in the same tree. i've always gotten stuck with that in the past because it always looks so messy.

I can do more than that in just one generation ;-)

go for it

You'd be surprised, there is this book called The Unbroken Chain Which is 2 THICK volumes, which shows how most of the frum ( and not frum) world come from one person!
i believe the book is out of print but it was printed by CIS , sorry but i forgot the name of the Author.
there is an index in the book too!!!

Neil Rosenstein.

eta: The index is annoying.

http://www.amazon.com/Unbroken-Chain-Biogr...s/dp/096105784X
cool

Anyhow I was curious how many of us here can connect our families. I'm sure they mostly do, just gotta do a bit of research.

(Really annoying, I've got a verrry common last name so it's almost impossible to research of find relatives)

It's a little easier when you have geographical information, a basic timeline and an idea of names have been changed, etc.

On geni you have to input everything as if it were on paper? That's impossible for me to do, I have over 100 first cousins on one side alone. I was hoping it would magically pull up all my relatives

How accurate are these home-made family trees? I'm skeptical because I once found my family on one (linked back to the middle ages) but we were not related by blood. They listed my grandparent with her step-parent, not biological parent.

You actuallly don't have to input that many relatives. You input your immediate family, then you invite them to join, then they can invite their family members, and that's how it expands.

I have one SIL who's extremely well-connected so the family tree really took off through her.

Run a search you may be in already.

I got nobody.

They're as accurate as you make them. Noone is stopping anyone from putting in false info. But on geni, like jeanette pointed out, you can have the whole family working on it together so if one person inputs false info another member of that tree can edit.

I just checked again. We have 30,211. Basically I think someone wrote Geni or Geni wrote us that we're second to largest.

For research, rather than linking based on those you know- this place and its info is a good start.

eta: JewishGen and IAJGS are good starting points, too.

Me neither, unless they are like 18th cousins or something...

That could get time consuming. Thank G-d (I guess) I don't know too much on most of my family, and for one wing there is a published book.

It's up to 30,221 now.

Um...thanks for introducing me to my new obsession.

I already found some distant relatives I never knew.

So you're also on that tree? I suppose once it's that big it just keeps growing non-stop. Does it mainly branch out or up?

Hehe misery likes company Seriously though, none of my relatives took up my invite to help with the tree so I'm still working on it alone. I found two potential relatives, but haven't worked out where exactly they fit in.

It's a fascinating tree, there are some really big names on that tree. It mostly branches out until someone comes along and adds a few generations upward and then further branching out and tree linking ensues.

Dude, you can't search genealogical records, etc. by screen name.

eta: can we have an information exchange with last names, etc. and locations?

Oh, I was working on stuff from 9:30pm til 4:45am this morning-- (got a few winks, though)

How do I link my tree to other existing family trees?

My family tree would have petered out as well except for one SIL who took it up and all her family members took it up. 95% of the branching is through her.

I must be missing something. How do you find relatives???
No one I know that is related to me is on the site....

I punched in the last names, and the few results that came up were seemingly irrelevant......

With Geni, Yad Vashem (despite everyone saying that they knew no relatives that remained in Europe- actually not true), JewishGen.

Then I was able to find people asking questions about people from certain towns in particular regions (some names are relatively uncommon)- and I've since emailed them and am awaiting a response, but I've since found this.


[What I mean w/screennames was, don't try to input k-rebbe, I was just kidding..]

eta: but I bet, based on where we all live- the geographic spread- we probably know relatives of each other...I can bet on it, since I've found other Baltimore relatives (they're probably 8th cousins or something, but still) that I never heard of.

Click on 'more' under the persons name and click on create a cycle. This will connect your tree to another tree.

I forgot to mention the SS Death Index, which can be very valuable.

No.
I want to merge my tree with an existing tree (started by a cousin). This will not work.

I'm up to 65 and stuck

Can we exchange surnames, dates and locations?

I've just found out that the email invites look like spam which is why noone is joining my tree

Interesting. We have a published book too. . .

In the help section it says they are working on this. It would make life a lot easier, lots of my cousins have trees. On the other hand, archaic cousins without email access are a pain...

yeah, I joined yesterday after reading this thread, but I'm stymied. I found a cousin who is on a tree with 800 people, me included. But I added her as a friend instead of family, and now I can't figure out how to connect me the new user with me on that 800 person tree (I can't even see her tree, since I'm not family). I want to click on her profile and "add as family" but apparently I can't since I friended her first, help section says I'd have to either email the help center, or invite (get invited?) under another email address. I couldn't find anything helpful in the help section. I messaged the cousin asking her to send me an invite under another email address.

Can you explain this? It sounds like maybe what I need to do to get myself on my cousin's tree?

batya, how did you find a cousin there? (i also joined today, after this thread)

Its when a person appears in the family tree more than once- like Mildred is your great aunt by marriage's brothers wife and also married to your husband's uncle.

I think you just have your cousin invite you.

I didn't realize you can't merge trees. That's stupid.

The site is VERY user UNfriendly.....

Well. a close relative of mine thinks its a scam to get people's personal info.

Quite possibly as there is no "delete" option, or an option to remove yourself from the site.....

The starter of the tree can remove people.

how do you do that? if my grandparents are first cousins, how do i show that?

I thought about that, but what would someone do with my family tree?