How Many Trees In Your Data Base? Saturday Night Challenge

The original post to the Saturday Night Challenge this week can be found HERE along with the links to all the people who participate.  The wording of the challenge is as follows.

1) How many different "trees" do you have in your genealogy management program (i.e., RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, reunion, etc.) or online tree (e.g. Ancestry Member Tree, MyHeritage tree)?

2)  How many trees do you have, and how big is your biggest tree?  Do you have some smaller "bushes" or "twigs?"


I am going to be a fail for this weeks challenge.  I use Reunion software as my genealogy management program and I can find no where that says how many trees I have.  That is probably because I keep everything in one tree.  If I go to the top under "files' my one tree is listed.  It is all connected.  I have my line and my husbands line and my children's father's lines etc all together.  I have step families lines and adopted families lines all in the same one.  So the quick answer to how many trees I have is one.  It has 7202 people in it.  I have thought about trying to separate out the lines but that would get really messy.  Especially if I tried to separate out my mother's side from my father's side.  With my Pennsylvania German Dutch background on both sides there is a lot of intertwining of the branches way back.   I have always worked on my data base as one large tree.

Reunion does have something interesting.  You can go on the left column where there is a section toward the bottom called "sidebar".  In that area something called "tree tops" can be selected.  Then on the far right column, shows up lists under two sub headings - my name and my children's fathers name - how many tree tops are in each.  Mine has 149 tree tops and his has 56 treetops so in my data base I have 205 tree tops.  His top generation is generation 15.  My top generation is generation 26. I have been having issues with my screen shot feature on my lap top so I used my phone to take photos of my tree tops lists.  The first six pictures are mine and the last four are my ex's lines tree tops lists.  My largest tree top is generation 9 which has 34 tree tops listed.

Back around the end of the 1990's when I started messing around with my tree I only wanted to know who my great grandmother's father was.  But in the process got sucked into genealogy as a hobby.  About 2000 I figured out I was supposed to have a research goal.  I decided I would try to get every line to immigration.  I have not had a great deal of interest in searching over seas.  Therefore if there is any information from prior to immigration in my tree it is a gift to me from others.  

As far as information on any given surname that I have that may or may not be connected to my surname.  I have not thrown that info away but I have not worked out a tree of it.  I have the information either in digital or actual folders.