Nuts From the Family Tree: Mom's Big Tree

I must have told you about Mom's really big tree by now... maybe mentioned it about a skabillion times! She has 70,600 plus individuals on it. That's a lot, right? Mom said that she heard of someone who had 100,000 individuals on their tree but I dunno... That's hard for me to wrap my mind around.

Last time I was back east to see Mom we chatted about her Big Tree and how she likes to share information with interested people. She has, however, been reluctant to just put her Big Tree out there for the world to see. Her objections are twofold and quite reasonable, I thought.

A number of years ago a relative asked Mom for information she had complied regarding Samuel Albert House.? The relative didn't like what she saw, specifically?that Samuel Albert was born out of wedlock... so she changed it. Unfortunately this relative got busy sharing her doctored information and now it's out there as gospel. Mom got burnt. And when Mom gets burnt she gets mad.

Another objection Mom had to making her tree public is that she didn't want people bothering her with the "where did you get that" question. You see, Mom has been at this since the 1970s when she kept meticulous notes on chart sheets and index cards. If you are old enough to remember doing genealogy in?the good old days before the computer you know what this is about:) So when Mom got her first version of Family Tree Maker way back when, she put in the bare-bones information knowing that she possessed all of the back up data in her big blue binders.

On this most recent trip I spent some goodly amount of time browsing Mom's blue binders containing the Williams and Whetstone families information. There was one letter in particular in which every paragraph invariably contained the words, "where did you get that?"

Today of course, Mom is busy using sources and notes. We love Notes on FTM because Mom can use it as a note to me about random details she remembers.

Anyhoo, when I saw Mom last week we chatted about the best way to share her Big Tree. And do it in a way that no one but us can change it. I emailed Randy Seaver (expert and author of the blog Genea-Musings at http://www.geneamusings.com/) when I got home to ask him what our options?were for uploading Mom's Big Tree GEDCOM. Randy, as always, was super helpful and pointed me in the right direction, anticipated my next question and offered pointers to keep us on track?while selecting the best options. So Thanks, Randy!!!

We chose Ancestry.com and yesterday I uploaded all 62,967 individuals on the version of the tree I have in my possession at the moment. (Mom has more on the latest version of her working tree but I don't have it here and that's another story.) The upload was super easy... after I went and purchased the download of Family Tree Maker 2012. When reading Randy's emails I realized that I had FTM 2010 and it wouldn't have the automatic sync feature that would make my Gen life easy:)

I selected the Share button in the upper right of the screen in FTM 2012. It asked me what tree I wanted to share on Ancestry.com and how I wanted to name it. Did that then clicked the?Upload Now?button and went to lunch. Checked about 20 minutes later and it wasn't done yet. At about the 45 minute mark I got concerned. Went on Ancestry's web site to see?how worried?I should be. Maybe I should have uploaded the GEDCOM from the Ancestry.com web site's Family Trees drop down menu? But not to worry, a moment later when I went back to my open FTM program screen it told me the work was now done and asked if I wanted to see the tree online? You bet I did I did!

Seems like the only glitch is that some of the individuals born in the 1700s and 1600s were marked as living. Now that's inconvenient! So I have been busy going through as many branches as I can discover, trying to find all of those tagged as living - even when there is a death date - and change it to deceased. If I miss anyone they won't show on Mom's Big Tree because the Ancestry setting we've chosen hides anyone listed as living for security.

Mom's Big Tree is named "Virgiania Williams Kelly's Big Tree" on Ancestry.com,?so if you run into it, say hi:)

Today's photo from the Archive:

Me, 1st birthday:)

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