Looking back at Family....

So, I was thinking it might be kind of cool to try to do a family tree and see how far back I could go. I went to the website Ancestry.com where they had a free trial period. I entered my Dad's name, thinking that would be a good place to start and, immediately, there were a bunch of other names and information for my relatives. Great! This looked like it was going to be easy! I worked on my Dad's line for a bit and then started on my Mom's name. Again, instant hits of relatives started popping up. Not only did their names come up but it started populating an actual family tree. So I continued on for a while, each time adding more and more names. People I had never heard of. People that were part of my family by virtue of marriage. With each new person 20 or more bits of information popped up as well - things like passenger lists from ships, census information, military records, birth records and death certificates. Every time I accepted another person onto my tree, ten more would pop up and more information would be there. In a short time, my family tree went from a tiny spruce to an unwieldy scary oak with limbs that intersect willy nilly. It kept sprouting new tendrils with names of very, very distant relatives and more information kept spewing forth until the whole things became so stressful I had to shut it down!

What I thought was going to be a nice little project where I could show my parents, Aunties and Uncles, and Grandparents turned into a night mare of cousins and remarriages and step children thrice removed! I was getting info on people I never knew nor wanted to know existed. It was just all too much! I can see why people get roped into Ancestry.com. I mean, I have to admit, it was interesting but it was also something like a pyramid scheme. Once I started it became nearly impossible to quit! I think I got out just in time.

Later, I realized that Ancestry.com is owned and operated by the Mormons. Somehow, the relentlessness of the website started to make sense to me. Good thing I got out when I could!