52 Ancestors Week 25: Broken Branch

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 25

After the storms that blew through my area last week, it seems appropriate that this week's theme is "Broken Branch." Have you had to trim a branch from your family tree after you figured out it wasn't the right line? Are you researching a branch that it feels like there is nobody else in the world who is researching them? What about a collateral line that seems to have gotten lost?

Just another tree floating in the ether. For now....

   

     When you look at my family tree on Ancestry, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? If your first thought is "Wow! There's a lot of Italians and Quebecois here!", you're not wrong. At the time of this blog's posting, my tree on Ancestry is sitting at a hefty 10,184 people. Yeah, there's a lot of profiles to cover and don't worry I have a very, very good reason for having so many people both living and deceased in there. Most of them are sourced, too! At this point I should really be calling the tree "The Forest of the Dead". But, that's already taken and is a great episode of "Doctor Who".  Besides, I have living relatives in my tree so it really wouldn't fit. Maybe I should call it "All Roads Lead to Haverhill"?  It's not selling out if it's your brand!

    The real reason why my tree is so extensive is not just because there are large families in there and because I research descendants of various ancestors like my 4th great-grandparents, Jean-Baptiste Bibeau and Therese Laroche. I have several floating branches which I am trying to connect to the big tree.

       Floating trees are a good way to get the lay of the land when you don't know how a DNA match or a friend connects with you. For example, I created a floating tree for my distant cousin, genealogist Mary Kiselyk aka "GesualdoGenie" when I didn't know how she connected with me. When I looked at her tree, she told me that we connect in several ways because Gesualdo, like many other Italian towns, have people who intermarry and a tree becomes a forest quickly when that happens. Looking at you, Famiglietti family.

    Early in my genealogical adventure, I found one route from Mary which led to my 6th great-grandparents, Domenico Petruzzo and Veneranda Gentile. Mary told me that there were other paths via the Carrabs line and other lines in Gesualdo. I stuck with that one as it was the first one I found. I'm sentimental like that. =) 

    Mary is a distant DNA match for my dad and a couple of his cousins on the Carrabs side. She has actually been very helpful in sorting out the Carrabs branches as she and another distant cousin did a lot of work researching the family lines in Gesualdo. They purchased the films from the region of Avellino and took pictures of various documents you would not easily get on Antenati or any other website as they are church records. She and her husband spent hours taking photos of the films. Once the scans were made available online, she was ecstatic!

    It's no wonder she picked "GesualdoGenie" as a screen name. She's just that good and honestly she was my gateway to the exciting world of Italian genealogy.

    Finding my connection to Mary happened pretty quickly because when I was working on the tree, we didn't have "MyTreeTags" since they weren't available when I worked on the line in 2018. "MyTreeTags" are a fun way to keep track of people on your tree without having to search through your database. I use them because my tree is so extensive and the labels you create sort of turn your tree on Ancestry into a mini version of WikiTree. As you can imagine I created a label for floating trees because I have no idea where they go. For now. I usually reserve that specific tag for certain DNA matches these days because I REALLY want to know what the connection is and sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands when someone does not respond to a message.

      Speaking of WikiTree, you can create floating trees there as well if you follow these steps:

1. Go to Add.

2. Select New Person.

    That's basically all it takes to create a floating branch there. I've done it many times as I research the Gullo and Butruce family lines. It also comes in handy for the "Italians in Haverhill" subproject I'm working on since I'm probably connected to many people there as well. Keeping track of all those floating trees is easier on WikiTree as every user on the site has a list of profiles they can manage. It's pretty handy and I try to connect the profiles stuck in the ether to the "big tree" whenever we have a "Connect-a-Thon". Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. As far as the "Italians in Haverhill" subproject goes.....I think I've managed to make a few connections.

    To the left is a list of connections I have to people in the "Italians in Haverhill" category on WikiTree. Many of them are blood relatives and many more are just connected via a marriage. All of the connections started out as floating trees on the website. Are they connected to the world tree? Some might be. So far I have ninety-eight profiles in that category and I've been working hard to find their connection to me. Blood or otherwise. I mean I do have cousins who descend from people in that book.

    These are just a few examples of the "broken branches" I have in my family tree. Hopefully, they get "mended" sooner or later. For now, they are best served as guides and research goals for when and if they will be added to the main tree. Broken branches doesn't always have to be a bad thing. No, they are just points of reference for your research. Sure they may make your tree seem bigger than it actually is. But, in the end it's fun to make them because you might find a way to make those "broken branches" fit with a little help from a friend or fellow friendly neighborhood Wikitreers.

See ya next time!

Addendum: My friend, Azure, just put this thread up on WikiTree where she talks about how to create an unconnected tree on FamilySearch: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1435441/familysearch-how-to-add-an-unconnected-person