Actually, some of us can have those really large trees, proven out as to connections because we work together with many other cousins, descendants of collateral lines, to make sure that our trees are as accurate as they can be. I work with 250 cousins from all over the world on our trees and we work together to find as much info as we can on all of our lines. So, while the initial tree that drew us together has over 7,000 known descendants, we all have much larger trees because we collaborate on all our connections, including the maternal lines of our direct lines, many of which interconnect with each other's direct lines down the road and all over the world -- 5 continents, 45 countries. Not a bit of it is "hoovered" up, but rather each person put into the trees is proven out from several different angles, several different pay services, several different countries and the purchased documentation of the living descendants of those people. Annie in Minnesota In a message dated 11/21/2011 8:52:27 A.M. Central Standard Time, ovington1@sky.com writes: Some record only those that they have researched themselves, others hoover up anyone elses research, hence the size of the large trees