Sabina,
(And to the German speakers on the list - sorry to write in English, but I
only know a few words of German, not enough to write a sentence........)
As for where to draw the line, I suppose it depends on your individual
perspective & your goals. I have over 25,000 people in my database, mainly because
my focus is all of the complicated (& fascinating) tangles in my 2 ancestral
towns of Schale (Westfalen) & Sonneborn (Lippe). So far I have not done too
much with the Sonneborn people. I have more info on the Schale people.
From Schale, there were several hundred people who came to America. Since
almost all of them were connected in some way to one or another of my ancestral
lines starting way back to 1716 (the oldest churchbooks still existing), I did
include them in my tree. I'm glad I did because they settled in clusters
here in the states, & their marriages over here kept the tangles going & added
some new ones.
Due to all the tangles (the very old ones) I am my own 9th cousin. My
"research buddy" & mentor in all things genealogical is my cousin of 6 different
degrees (from 3rd cousin to 8th cousin once removed). My tree is on WorldConnect
at Rootsweb, & because of it I have been contacted by cousins who are only
very distantly related but they are overjoyed to find something of their own
ancestry that they hadn't known before. Things like that make me glad that I've
included all those "far removed" families because it helps someone else.
Also, I have personally met cousins who are not closely related at all, but
we still consider each other to be family anyway. I have also found, much to
my surprise, that I have distant relatives near where I live, & I'm not
anywhere close to the areas where the immigrant generation had their clustered
settlements!
I'm continuing to add to my tree because my goal is to account for every
related family from Schale & Sonneborn who immigrated. To do that, I need to
include almost everyone who was in those towns before the immigrations because
it's the only way to make the connections. I consider it an homage to my direct
ancestors because the people who are "distant" for me now were "close" for
them. It's a huge project, of course. And for the most part it isn't a history
because I don't have the resources to document the lives of all of the
descendants. So yes, a lot of my tree is "just" a collection of names & dates, but
they have led me to some surprising & interesting discoveries, & it's an
education in realizing how much I have in common with so many other people.
I will be updating my tree in the near future & will post the link to the
list when I do.
herzliche Grüße,
Gloria Scott
Illinois, USA
In a message dated 3/29/2006 5:23:21 PM Central Standard Time,
sabina@cogeco.ca writes: