I have been at it for nearly a year now, and it was all started when I retired and my wife gave me a genealogy tree maker program with a free (short) subscription to Ancestry. Now, I am not claiming it is 100% good - there are some software "bugs" in it still, and things happen in history it can't sope with. For example, in the past, when a child was unlikely to survive, or who had already died young, it was quite common for the parents to neme a subsequent child with exactly the same name. The tree maker software can link husbands/wives to the dead child, using only the name as reference. The only way round this is to delete the child reconnect the husband or whatever to the adult Then reenter the child info. If using this software my advice (with hindsight!) would be to keep several, smaller trees with different branches kept separate. It is a can of something; not always worms. I have found three first cousins living in the UK that I had no idea about! I also found that my ancestors from Gunton Hall were close to the king of the time and also found little snippits of information about their kindnesses to the poor etc. I think it is about more than DNA. It is certainly teaching me a lot about history that I didn't learn at school. (I was terrible at history partly because it wasn't about real people.) My wife, on the other hand, is, being a writer, setting her family tree down in a series of historical novels, so there is more than one way to "skin a cat" Anyway - good luck with your decision. Richard In a message dated 08/12/2011 15:34:24 GMT Standard Time, fluxion@roadrunner.com writes: Dave: Yes, quite a can of worms, but you are not alone. Many of us are the result of some unorthodox behavior on the part of our ancestors. My advice is to write it all down and pass it on to your descendants in hopes that the information will not be lost. How to keep the records in a genealogy database is a problem because the software does not deal very well with such variations from the norm. Nevertheless, I think it is important to preserve the genetic trail. We are just beginning to be able to establish such genetic links and I think they will become more important as time goes on. Establishing such evidence at this time may be very important to those who come after. The story of how you figured out what you have may also be extremely interesting as often these things tend to be covered up or lost as generations pass. Cheers, Tod Brown Maine, USA ============================================================================ ===== I'd like the benefit of the List's advice on how best to arrange my family data of which I have amassed a good deal. My GGGGM, Elizabeth Tennant nee Thompson husband died in 1818 aged 30 something. They had produced six children since their marriage in 1808 of which only one was living at the time of his death. I have his predecessors going back to about 1650. Now after he died, Elizabeth had two more children in E Dereham in 1821 and 1822. It would seem the father was a Robert Sadler and he seems to have been, for a while at least, her "toy boy" being still a teenager at this time He disappears and I think I have him located on the 1851 census though I have not put too much effort into this. Elizabeth later marries a widower, Ambrose Last, in L Ellingham in 1825. Later in 1839 and 1840 Elizabeth's daughter, going under the name of Charlotte Sadler Tennant, has 2 children, baptised James Tennant and Mary Ann Tennant. In 1842 Charlotte marries James Skitmore in L Ellingham and the marriage record shows her father as the aforementioned Robert Sadler. I am 99.9% certain that this James is the father of James and Mary Ann Tennant. James Tennant becomes my GGGGF. All this means that I have none of the original Tennant DNA going back to the 1600s. So now the question: Do I bias my tree more towards the Thompson line( thanks to another List member I do have this data) or do I also include or abandon the Tennants before 1818? The Skitmore line also is included of course. What a can of worms this genealogy opens!!!!! Dave ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to NORFOLK-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message