Absolutely No Short Cuts Allowed...and I Really Mean It!

Karma has once again bitten me on the butt. You may recall I used a shortcut on ancestry.com to prevent new green leaves for me to click from showing up. Instead of the tree view, I used the list view.

I clicked thousands of leaves. The process added hundreds of people to my family tree. There are kings and queens and Indian chiefs dating back beyond the Mayflower to the 4th and 5th centuries.

Ancestry.com added a new feature a couple of weeks ago. On the screen for individuals, you can now click a button and a new box appears detailing the exact relationship to me. For example, it will say John Doe is your 8th great grandfather and list the names of the direct descendants between us. It's very cool.

Because I used the list view instead of the family tree view, I traced people back to the beginning of time who are not related to me in any shape, form or fashion. I added hundreds of people to my tree who are not related to me. It happens...don't judge me. All that time...sigh.

My new endless task is working my way through the list view to verify each person is indeed related to me. Most aren't. There is definitely at least one queen and an Indian chief still in my family tree. A lot of the rest turn out to be related to someone else.

Fortunately, verifying we're related is a fairly mindless task--like crotchet or knitting. I just repeat the same process over and over again, adding a few steps to delete those who turn out to have no relationship to me. I make a lot of progress while watching college football games and reality shows on television.

In the process I've discovered duplicates and triplicates--people with the same vital statistics (birth date, birth location, death date and location) who are somehow each related to me differently. Some dude back in England in the 1500s is my 8th, 9th and 10th great grandfather. Either there's an error somewhere or he's guilty of stuff I don't even want to think about.

When I started at the beginning of the alphabet, there were nearly 2000 people on the list. I've made it through K and have knocked 600 people off the list. By the end of the football season I should make it the rest the way through the alphabet.

Meanwhile, every time I click on an individual a new green leaf appears. For now I'm ignoring them. I've spent enough time clicking leaves. Before I click any more I need to figure out what's going on with all the duplicates.

It's enough to make anyone...

The Crotchety Old Man