When I first walked into the Sutro Library—billed as the largest genealogical collection west of Salt Lake City—the first reference book I pulled off their shelves outlined the descendants of the founding Taliaferro settlers in America. I found that book years ago, and the book's format was not a rare one. Today, however, those pursuing their family history are far more likely to draw up a pedigree chart outlining the ancestors of one particular individual. (Remember the instruction in beginning genealogy classes, "Start with yourself"?) But with the advent of genetic genealogy, those mystery DNA cousins prompted me to do a hybrid approach: first, trace my ancestry. Then, identifying a founding ancestor, reverse course and plot the lines of all that ancestor's descendants back to the current date.
Now that I'm working on the DNA matches connecting my husband—the subject testing on behalf of my mother-in-law's family history—to the line of the earliest William Ijams, I've seen quite a jump in the number of names in that family tree. I checked once again, since it is time for my biweekly progress report, and saw that the past two weeks brought 214 newly-identified relatives to my mother-in-law's tree. That family tree now contains 35,045 documented individuals—and counting, as there are many more to document before the end of this month.
While pushing back through history one generation at a time can add to a family tree, adding the collateral lines to each generation can make for a very bushy tree. It's a matter of deep versus wide, depending on which research approach you choose—or, in my case, deep and wide, all in the same tree.
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