Which Side the Cousin Falls On is Key

It's always great when someone who writes to you about your family tree turns out to be a distant cousin. They'll usually say, "My great grandfather is in your family tree. How are we related?"

It always takes a little work before I can answer that question. First I find their ancestor in my family tree and see their relationship to me. Then I add my new cousin to my tree—without knowing the names of their parents or grandparents—to see our relationship.

That ends now. A few years ago I shared a spreadsheet I called a relationship calculator. (Download your copy.) Its main use is to help you name your exact relationship to a descendant of one of your ancestors.

For instance, when I go to Italy I visit my Dad's first cousins. Their grandparents were my great grandparents. If I want to know my relationship to my cousin's grandchild, I can use the relationship calculator. I am the great granddaughter of Francesco Iamarino, and my cousin's grandchild is his 2nd great grandchild. That makes the youngster my 2nd cousin once removed (2C1R). The spreadsheet makes that clear.

What if we look at the same spreadsheet in a different way? This time I want to find my relationship to the great grandchild of a particular cousin in my family tree.

Once you find which cell matches a particular cousin, you'll see your relationship to all their descendants.

I'm randomly choosing Antonio Pilla from my family tree. Born in 1878, Antonio is my 2nd cousin 3 times removed (2C3R). Let's pretend his great granddaughter wrote to me asking how we're related.

Step 1 of 2. Find the Right Cell

"2nd cousin 3 times removed" is in 2 different cells of the relationship calculator:

• once in relation to my 1st great grandparent (column E row 11), and
• once in relation to my 4th great grandparent (column H row 8).

That means I need to understand how I'm related to Antonio Pilla. Our relationship chart on Ancestry.com shows a connection through my Francesco Iamarino. He's my great grandfather. That means Antonio Pilla is my 2C3R found in column E row 11 of the relationship calculator.

Step 2 of 2. Count the Generations

The rest is a snap. Antonio is my 2C3R from column E row 11, and I want to see my relationship to his great granddaughter. All I have to do is move down column E three rows:

1. move down one row for Antonio's child
2. move down a second row for Antonio's grandchild
3. move down a third row for Antonio's great grandchild.

Now I'm at column E row 14 which reads "2nd cousin 6 times removed" (2C6R).

"No kidding, Einstein," you say. "Your 2C3R plus 3 generations equals your 2C6R."

That's right…except when it isn't. And now I finally see why that simple math works only some of the time. It depends on which side of the yellow line your relationship falls on.

The updated relationship calculator (see the link above) has a diagonal string of cells highlighted in yellow. Each yellow cell is a full-cousin relationship: 1st cousin, 2nd cousin, 3rd cousin, etc.

Same type of cousin. One to the left and one to the right of the yellow line. Which side the cousin falls on is everything!

Antonio Pilla fell into cell E11, and that's to the left of the yellow line. But what if my relationship to him was the 2C3R found in cell H8—to the right of the yellow line? You can see that the great granddaughter of a man in cell H8 would be my 5th cousin! The progression would be:

• Antonio 2C3R
• his child 3C2R
• his grandchild 4C1R
• his great grandchild 5C

That's what's been driving me nuts. I couldn't understand why simple math didn't always work. The key is that yellow line.

Maybe you're able to figure out relationships in your head. But as you've seen, you've got to get past one big wrinkle: the yellow line.

Now I can stop putting temporary, unnamed people in my family tree just to figure out a relationship. The answer was right there all along in the relationship calculator!

For more uses of the relationship calculator:

• How to Find Your Exact Relationship to Any Cousin
• This Chart Finds Hidden Relationships in Your Family Tree
• Can't Connect to Your DNA Match? Keep Trying

How to Export and Delete Branches from Your Family Tree

Last week I cut my Family Tree Maker file size in half with one move. (See "When Is a Genealogy Harvest Too Big?") The file was impossibly big at more than 7 gigabytes. Quickly removing more than 25,000 obsolete source citations cut the file size in half.

My project to document my ancestral hometowns will make my family tree grow so much more. That's why I decided to make more cuts.

I'm going to export some in-law and distantly related branches out into their own family trees. Years ago I decided to limit in-law branches. I said I would not document anyone but the parents of a relative's spouse. I wouldn't include that in-law's siblings or grandparents—only their parents. (See "When to Cut a Branch Off Your Family Tree.")

But I had one exception to the rule. If my cousin asked me to research their spouse's family, I went all-in.

That rule gets adjusted today. I will research my cousin's spouse if asked. But I'll do it in a separate Family Tree Maker file. Leave my master family tree file out of it.

Three exportable branches came to mind:

1. My great granduncle Semplicio's wife's family. She came from a huge family that was so easy to document. A relative of hers encouraged me to continue the work. But that are so many people and documents, and they have no relation to me. I'll export them to a separate tree.
2. My 1st cousin's wife's family. My cousin asked me to document his wife's family. But she is continuing this project herself. I'll export them to a separate tree.
3. My distant cousins who emigrated to Brazil and had 100 years' worth of descendants. After years of longing for my distant cousin's book on the Brazilian branch, I finally received it. What an amazing work she produced! But I can't get documents for the Brazil-born family members, so it's a dead end. I'll export them to a separate tree.

I also have a lot of people who we know are cousins, but there aren't enough Italian vital records to prove it. I don't want to pull them out, but I may. I can always pull them back in if more documents arise.

Exporting the Branch

I'm starting this process with a 3.846 gigabyte Family Tree Maker file containing 57,831 people. Let's pull out great granduncle Semplicio's wife's family and keep only her and her parents.

I began by going to her in my family tree and choosing File > Export. I selected her name, Giovina Renza, and clicked Ancestors. Many of her siblings' families are in my family tree. To capture them, I checked the box for Include ancestors' descendants.

I excluded the descendants of Giovina and my great granduncle Semplicio. Those people are my cousins. I had to consult my family tree on Ancestry.com to make sure I didn't miss any of my cousins and their spouses. That left 97 people to export to Giovina Renza's family tree. I clicked Apply then OK to export the group, making sure to include all their related document images.

3 steps to help you safely preserve and delete an unwanted branch of your family tree.

Deleting Only the Right People

Now things were going to get tricky. I wanted to delete all the right people from my main family tree. I went to Family Tree Maker's company page to find the best method for deleting a branch from your family tree. It was surprising.

The best way to delete the branch is to use Family Tree Maker to create a chart including all the right people. Then there is an option to Delete From File either Selected Persons or All Persons in Chart. (This doesn't work with Relationship charts or Pedigree charts.) To keep Giovina, her parents, and all their documents, I'll have to delete branches within the chart one at a time.

I went to the oldest Renza in my tree, Giovina's grandfather, and created a descendant chart. I found Giovina in the chart so I could make sure to keep her. Then I deleted the descendants of her aunts, uncles, and siblings. To do this, I:

• Selected the eldest member of a family unit, then
• Right-clicked to choose Select Person and All Descendants and Spouses.

This highlighted a large group of people that I made sure did not include those I want to keep. I right-clicked any highlighted person and chose Delete From File > Selected Persons. Up popped a list of the people to delete. After again making sure my cousins weren't in there, I clicked OK, then I clicked Delete.

The process took a couple of minutes and gave me a progress report part of the way through. It read, "Persons remaining to be deleted: 22." Then 13, 11, 10, 9, and done. The chart regenerated, and that group of people was gone.

I repeated the process carefully 4 more times. In 3 cases I had to delete people individually. Either they had no descendants or their descendants included Giovina. Now I had only what I wanted: Giovina, her parents, and her descendants who are my cousins.

Taking Care of Associated Media Files

Next I went to the Media tab of Family Tree Maker to check that:

• Giovina had her pre-marriage immigration record and all her census forms
• Her father had his birth record and even his census forms where his now-deleted son was the head of household.
• Her mother had all her document images.

When I looked only at my collection of census files, I spotted one for a now-deleted Paul Renza. I clicked to see the details, and sure enough, the document was linked to no one. That means I'll have to find and delete any orphaned document images myself.

To do this, I opened my exported Family Tree Maker file for the Renza family in a new window. It contains all the appropriate documents. I can compare the two Family Tree Maker files side-by-side to make sure I delete all the right ones from my main file.

The Renza branch removed 92 people from my family tree. When I finished removing the other 2 branches in my list, I had removed 714 people from my family tree!

With a slimmed-down tree, I can continue adding my 18th- and 19-century cousins from Italy. That is my focus and my purpose. I'm eager to get back to it once International Genealogy Loose Ends Month is over.

When Is a Genealogy Harvest Too Big?

Note: The problems I described in this article were entirely my laptop's fault. I replaced it after 9 months of needless suffering.

Halfway through International Genealogy Loose Ends Month I faced up to a big problem. (See "Make November Genealogy Loose Ends Month.") My Family Tree Maker file is too bloated with 57,827 people. It can take 3 hours for me to compact the file, which is an important maintenance step. I have to leave my computer running overnight so my files can upload to the cloud.

Something's got to give!

Early last week I was fixing existing images in my family tree—not adding new ones. I edited every World War I and II draft card to crop out the black space. I love the results! (See "How to Improve Your Digital Genealogy Documents.") I replaced bad images with good ones of a smaller file size. That's a worthwhile task, and I planned to move on to bad census images next.

Then I remembered a loose end from earlier this year. The New York City Municipal Archives released vital records for the city's boroughs, and I have tons of relatives from the city.

You've hit the jackpot in vital records for your family tree. Can you accept them?

In my family tree, whenever possible, I used the NYC vital record indexes on Ancestry.com to note certificate numbers. For example, my grandmother was born in the Bronx in 1899. In the description field for her birth, I added "Bronx birth certificate #3072." I did that for every birth, marriage, and death record from the city when possible. (See the "Day 5" section of "7 Days to a Better Family Tree.")

This past week I spent a day gathering 172 documents from the Municipal Archives' website. The most efficient way to tackle this task was to use the latest GEDCOM file exported from my family tree.

I opened my GEDCOM in a text editor and searched for:

• Bronx birth certificate
• Bronx death certificate
• Bronx marriage certificate

…doing that for Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens as well. The certificates are downloadable as PDFs, but I can export the certificate from Acrobat as an image. Two-page certificates export as two images. Now I have 172 PDFs plus 309 document images!

With my Family Tree Maker file already struggling under its own weight, I'm not about to add 309 images to it. Holy cow, that would take forever anyway.

Instead, I know I have the information available whenever I need it. I can create a source citation for each certificate that includes a link to the PDF. This way, anyone who finds their relative in my tree on Ancestry can get the document for themselves.

Sticking to the True Goal of My Family Tree

I began thinking of what I could do next without adding more documents to my tree.

My family tree's goal is to help people with ancestors from any of my ancestors' hometowns. It has names, dates, and places for TONS of people. But most of those facts have no sources or documents.

To add value to my tree, I can build useful source citations that include a link to the original documents. I don't have to add the documents themselves.

But before I build my missing source citations, I have another, really big loose end. Many years ago I documented my Grandpa Leone's entire hometown of Baselice, Italy. I did this by viewing microfilmed vital records (1809–1860) at a local Family History Center. It took me about 5 years to do. (See "Why I Recorded More Than 30,000 Documents.")

All those countless facts have well-crafted but useless source citations. Why is that? Because they cite the microfilm number you would need to order from a Family History Center. And they ended their microfilm program a few years ago.

Source citations can become obsolete. I know. I had 25,000 of them in my family tree. Here's the format for the updated citations.

Today all the documents I was citing are available on Italy's free Antenati website. (See "How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives.") It would be fantastic to rid myself of these 25,000 bad source citations and create usable ones to replace them.

In fact, I'm going to delete every one of the outdated citations in one fell swoop. Then I'll work on adding good citations. I can go to the Sources tab in Family Tree Maker and rip out all the bad source citations at once. They're gone now. The process was scary, but all is well. And it cut my 7GB file size in HALF!!

Wrapping Up "Loose Ends Month"

I'll close out November by creating or improving source citations for documents and facts already in my family tree. Then I'll return to my previous project which documents the town of Baselice after 1860.

It's been a tremendous experience focusing on loose ends this month. I'm so excited by all I found. I don't know about you, but I'd like to dedicate one week a month to genealogy loose ends. Who knows? There may come a time where everything is all tied up.

Yeah, right!