connection through one person to tree

Question

I connected my treelet through one person, and so when I search my connection to others, the connection pathway is always through that person - but I imagine at least some of the time there are more than one way/closer ways some are connected to me. How does that work?

Answer 1

I can only provide examples, but let's speculate.

Let's say your current main connection to the tree is through (had to look it up) the Culver family. So this leads to other families, and eventually to the person on the Global Tree.

So let's then say that you fill out additional smaller branches and leaves, and end up finding that one of your relatives married a Miller, whose sister married a Bacon, who just happened to be Kevin Bacon's great-grandfather. Once that connection was created, and the links updated (happens nightly), you would check again and a new connection would show up in the connection finder and for those who it provides a shorter path, you would see the numbers decreased as to how many steps away they are.

Was this what you were looking for? Basically any additional connections you make to the tree will allow the finder to use all of them to find the shortest path between the two profiles.

Comments

Scott is such an amazing connector - he is great at adding folks to our global tree.

I'm fond of looking for ever closer connections, so this week I'll be trying to shorten the path between myself and Leo Tolstoy. I'll do this by examining each person between Tolstoy and myself and trying to ensure they each have at least three or four generations of ancestors added. I see my connection goes through my Monroe ancestors, so I might look at a descendant tree to see if it looks well filled out. Maybe some of my Monroe cousins are already on WikiTree but not connected to their ancestors - that might create a "shortcut" which pulls a lot of cousins closer.

One of my cousins called his family tree a "braided ficus." It made me laugh because we are cousins in multiple ways like I am with most people in southern Indiana and east Tennessee. As we keep growing and braiding our branches, we all grow closer.

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thanks for that idea. I started on Seely' s mother and branched away down, up and out - maybe I need to go back in to next person in original connection, rather than continuing outward from the mother

Answer 2

Have you tried your husband's connections?

Comments

we have only one person connected, as Ellen noted above. Thanks!

Answer 3

Connection Finder recalculates connection paths once a day, looking for the shortest path. As new connections are created, your paths to specific connection targets are likely to change -- and you probably will find that your paths no longer go through the same person.

After looking at your tree, I added a mother for Seely Culver, because I figured there might be some connections on that branch and I found information about Seely's mother very easily. And I orphaned her profile so it's ready for you to take charge.

Comments

Thanks Ellen!

Answer 4

One way to add connections is to push your roots deeper, but you will probably still go through the same person. With some of your roots in Italy, you will have a hard time finding records. The other way to increase connections is to go laterally using ancestor's siblings and spouses. Census records will net siblings, and marriage records net spouses. Both types are available on FamilySearch. Some states have records as recent as the 1950's available online on their own sites or FamilySearch and Ancesty.