Have you ever been overwhelmed with your genealogy stuff that you don't know what to do next? I mean sure, most of the time I'm searching for more stuff. The missing links. Those times when you have hit every other brick wall and are forced to spend time working on siblings of your direct ancestor. And then boom. You're at your 15th cousin five times removed's wife's uncle's second wife's great grandfather. Usually that only happens to me on geni. Just keep adding and adding and adding....
- if you have a tree on ancestry... And I think most genea-nerds do... You know about the hints. Those shaking leaves everyone gets excited about in the commercials. There may come a time when the number of hints is... Overwhelming.
- you think that would be awesome right? So many hints how can that be bad!?!?
- lets just say that I have 9095 hints as we speak. And no I didn't make up that number. How did it happen you ask? I just kept adding to my tree. Those lovely family tree hints? Yea those are like the gateway drug or something. Before you know it you're in deep. Oh it has five siblings and the parents?! Cool! You think so. But then boom. Those 7 new people all get 2 hints each and that's 14 leaves. One hint led to 14. Hypothetically.
- think of it this way. You have 4 grandparents. Say each has the family tree hint, an in each of those you have parents and 2 siblings. 16 people. If those 16 people have a family tree hint thats 16 hints. But they should all have at least 1 census hint right? 32 hints. All of your male ancestors so far have military records? Add 6 more (minimum... You could have draft and pension records ) so we're up to 38 hints. If all of those people are dead? Add a record each for SS, Obit, and findagrave. So now we could have 86 records for 16 people! Imagine if you have thousands of people in your tree! It just gets worse from there too.
- the further back you go you have more records, for the obvious reasons of the tree growing. But back in the day people may have had 8 kids or more. Adds to the hints you get. And of course anyone can have those headstone pictures. Do you have a Revolutionary war vet? Even if they're not a direct ancestor you get the war record, a pension file, a dar or sar record. Then if you're lucky enough to get to back in the day Europe, maybe some nobility or royalty, you get those family crests and flag pictures. You know what I mean. Then there are the wicked awesome castle pictures. Before you know it you have hundreds or thousands of hints and you ask yourself how did this happen?
- in not saying I don't like the hints. They're wonderful. But what do you do at this point? Start with photo and story hints? I have less of those so it could be a start. Family tree hints? Nooo that's how we got into this mess. Just walk away from it? Sounds like a plan for now at least.
-anyone else have this problem? What do you do?
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