Common Mistakes to Avoid When Building Your Family Tree
Many people enjoy the process of discovering their family history, and it becomes a lifelong hobby. Other people will take a stab at building their family tree, end up off on a tangent, get lost and quickly give up in frustration. You don’t want to be one of these people. Genealogy is as much about having the correct perspective and managing expectations as it is about family history.
At Genealogy In Time™, we want people to enjoy the process of discovering their family history. We have written this article to point out some of the more common mistakes people make when they decide to start building their family tree. Hopefully, this article will give you a better outlook on what is required to be successful with your own family history research.
Understand the Size of Your Family
Let’s start with the basics: how big is your family? The amount of time it takes to build your family tree is dependant on the size of your family. Most people tend to underestimate family size because they base their estimate on known brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, etc. and they forget about their extended family. Let’s try to estimate the size of a typical extended family. This will help you gauge the amount of work required to build a family tree.
With some digging, most people can trace their family history back about 150 years. A generation is 32 years, so this represents some five generations. That means being able to trace you family back to your great-great-great-grandparents. Generally, this will be the scope of your family tree. How many people would typically be in a family tree of this size? Well, you have two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents. If you keep counting backwards, you will find you have 32 great-great-great-grandparents. That is, 16 great-great-great-grandfathers and 16 great-great-great-grandmothers. Counting yourself, this means you have a total of 63 parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. going all the way back to your great-great-great-grandparents.
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