I tried to categorize the persons I have in my "research" and "cousin bait" RootsMagic database, which now has over 48,800 persons. The list includes:
1. My ancestral families - those that I am directly descended from according to my best judgment, based on my research and the research of others (e.g., authoritative books, periodical articles, and websites that provide source citations). This includes all spouses, children, spouses of the children, and sometimes parents of the spouses).
2. [Paternal surname} Seaver(s)/Sever(s)/ Seever(s)/Siever(s)/Seiver(s)/etc. surname persons - mainly in the United States but some from other countries. I include spouses and children, and sometimes parents of the spouses.
3. [Maternal surname] Carringer/Caringer/Karringer/etc. surname persons - mainly in the United States. I include spouses and children, and sometimes parents of the spouses.
4. [Maternal paternal surname] Able/Aubel/Abel/Able/etc. surname persons - mainly in the United States. I include spouses and children, and sometimes parents of the spouses.
5. [2nd great-grandmother's surname] Vaux/Vax/Vox/Voux/Vauks/Vanx/etc. surname persons - mainly in the United States. I include spouses and children, and sometimes parents of the spouses.
6. [3rd great-grandmother's surname] Dill/Dills/Dell surname persons - mainly in the United States. I include spouses and children, and sometimes parents of the spouses.
7. Possible relatives of my end-of-line ancestors - Newton, Brigham, Knapp, Smith (several, heh), Lamphier, etc. These are often unconnected to my ancestral families.
8. Lines of famous persons related to me - English monarchy, Charlemagne, U.S. Presidents, famous persons.
9. Persons in the ancestral lines of some of my autosomal DNA matches who have an online family tree so that I can determine their relationship to me.
10) Ancestral families of my wife, grandchildren and first cousins - these often provide more research experience in different countries for me.
11) Recently, I have been adding descendants of my 4th great-grandparents because currently living descendants may show up in my autosomal DNA matches. I use FamilySearch Family Tree and Ancestry Member Trees to find them, then use Ancestry Member Hints and FamilySearch Record Matches to support the assertions and support inclusion of the person in the database.
For the surname studies, I often have "bushes" of the family groups that are not attached to the main "tree"group. In many cases, there are different immigrant ancestors that are not related (to my knowledge) to persons in other bushes. My largest "bush" in my database is for the Seaver/Sever tree descended from Robert Seaver (1609-1683) who settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1634 - that is my own "bush."
I have one large research database in my RootsMagic desktop software. It is much easier to deal with one person profile in one database than to deal with one person in several databases (for example, if I had a separate database for my father, for my mother, for my wife, for my son-in-law, etc).
I do have other online family trees (mainly on Ancestry) - some for former research clients, and one for only my ancestral families (for DNA matches).
Until RootsMagic TreeShare came along, I had no easy way to update my Ancestry Member Trees. I still have no easy way to update my Findmypast, MyHeritage, WikiTree and WeRelate tree information.
Who's in your family tree database?
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Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver
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