Satuday Challenge: How Many Trees? Only One?

From Randy Seaver's GeneaMusings fun challenge: Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) How many different "trees" do you have in your genealogy management program (i.e., RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, reunion, etc.) or online tree (e.g. Ancestry Member Tree, MyHeritage tree)?

2)  How many trees do you have, and how big is your biggest tree?  Do you have some smaller "bushes" or "twigs?"

This is an easy challenge to answer- one tree. I have a tree that contains my ancestors- both my mother’s and my father’s and my husband’s ancestors as well. Why all of them together in one tree? Because I don’t know how to split the trees apart. It’s not a technical problem, however, but more one of who belongs in which tree if I split them?

Aren't they all in one book here somewhere?

There is Martha (Washburn) Titus (1637-1727) and her sister, Agnes (Washburn) Jackson (1624- after 1657). Well they are great-grandmothers on some of my father’s lines, so they obviously belong in my father’s tree you say. But not so fast, what about their brother Hope Washburn? Where do I put him? His son William Washburn (1669-1741) married Hannah Wooster (1671-1743) and her brother was Sylvester Wooster (1678-1712).

I can’t very well have Sylvester on my father’s tree and not on my mother’s! That would be like cutting off a member of her family. No, not like—I would be omitting her 6^th great-grandfather! So where do I split it? I’m going to have to have spouses William and Hannah on separate trees or siblings on different ones at some place. No, I don’t know how I can ever split them apart.

Okay, well let’s leave my husband’s on a separate tree then. Rich doesn’t need to have his family mixed in with mine does he? No probably not. Except, except, which tree do I put Pierre/Peter Angevine (1666-1730) on? He was married twice you know.

His first wife, Deborah Guion (1668-1711) gave birth to their son Louis making them Rich’s 6^th  great-grandparents. But wait, before we decide, remember his second wife, Maurgerite DeBonrepos (1683-after 1729) gave birth to their son, Eli, making Pierre and her MY 7^th great-grandparents.

Is your head spinning yet?

This is why I have all my family research in one tree. I have no clue how to split them apart and there are even more instances where distant cousins link up across the family lines. Many of these families lived in the same areas in early times in New England and the Hudson valley. So, I say let’s just leave them all together and not worry about it!