How Many Trees?

[William Lowther]

Is it best to do one massive combined family tree for me and my wife or is it best to split it up and have separate trees for each family - having at least four separate trees for each root person?

[dfilpus]

One tree. You will find yourself duplicating effort to maintain multiple trees.
You never know when the trees may touch as they grow.

[kyuck]

I agree

[SGilbert]

Well, my opinion only.
The wife & I have separate computers. We each have our own trees. She 18,400; me 6,400.
If I had her with me, I'd have 18k more than I care to in my tree.
Her entry details vary from mine is subtle ways.
If we both wanted to see or work on our families, we couldn't, as Reunion won't allow both of us on at the same time.
The only people we share are our own children & grandchildren. (No how, no way will our ancestors ever cross)

Keep your 2 sides apart, but only those.

[William Lowther]

Thank you for the response. I now want to combine my trees. I have four separate trees for my family. Will Reunion allow me to combine them in some automatic way or must I reenter all the information into one tree?

[theKiwi]

Thank you for the response. I now want to combine my trees. I have four separate trees for my family. Will Reunion allow me to combine them in some automatic way or must I reenter all the information into one tree?

Yes - you can import one Reunion family file into another using the File ------> Import ------> Reunion Family File menu.

If there is ZERO overlap between the families you currently have, then you're done when you import 3 of them into the 4th one.

Make a backup of the 4th file before you start!!!!

If there is overlap between the files (i.e. the same people in more than one file) you will then need to do Match and Merge to merge the duplicates down to a single person. My experience with Match and Merge is that you should know the expected outcome before you start, and then when you're done, make sure you got the expected outcome - it's all to easy for people to end up married to the same person twice, or to have kids duplicated in a family if you're not paying close attention and know what to expect and how to check that you got it.

Roger

[ttl]

To piggyback on Roger's response, I would add one caveat, and that's to make backups of all your family files so if something goes unexpectedly wrong, you can start again from the beginning without risk.

[eric.vanbeest]

Whether or not you keep separate trees depends for a large part on how much these trees are interwoven. If the only similarity between the trees is you and your spouse, then by all means keep them separated.

I am working out all the descendants of my forefathers and -mothers progressively, and so I keep multiple trees inside my family file – just so that Reunion's duplicate matching ability can pickup related people from other parts of the tree, or indeed, other trees altogether.

[Bob White]

Well, my opinion only...........The only people we share are our own children & grandchildren. (No how, no way will our ancestors ever cross).......
Keep your 2 sides apart, but only those.

Got my chuckle for the day! File your "no how, no way...." under Famous Last Words! Practically speaking, if my wife and I were both serious genealogy buffs, I likely would be doing as you do. But, with those fairly large numbers, it's highly unlikely that there are zero matches in ancestors between you all. Just saying.

[Barnbarroch]

Got my chuckle for the day! File your "no how, no way...." under Famous Last Words! Practically speaking, if my wife and I were both serious genealogy buffs, I likely would be doing as you do. But, with those fairly large numbers, it's highly unlikely that there are zero matches in ancestors between you all. Just saying.

Indeed! I have more than 4500 people (out of some 21000 ancestors) who are ancestors of both my mother and father. But I can see that if one side of the family comes from, say, Malaya, and the other from Uruguay, it might be a reasonable assumption that they wouldn't meet.

Jamie.

[Bob White]

Indeed! I have more than 4500 people (out of some 21000 ancestors) who are ancestors of both my mother and father. But I can see that if one side of the family comes from, say, Malaya, and the other from Uruguay, it might be a reasonable assumption that they wouldn't meet.

Jamie.

I'm also a firm believer in the old saw about six points of separation. e.g. Usually, one can take two random citizens of this whole planet and come up with a relationship within six stops. Again; just saying......