Genealogical Critical Mass

I have been working on my genealogy tree for a couple of years now, joining Ancestry.com as needed, partially because one brother is a Morman, and also out of curiosity. Typically, I would make great strides, then get stuck for a LONG time.  Last year,after a long hiatus, I hired a genealogist via Ancestry.com to try and break through on the male line of my dad.

We got "over the pond" back to Antrim, Ireland in 1712. I found that when they came over, they were Quakers in North Carolina, near Raleigh. Sad to say they were slave owners for a time. I'm not sure how to feel about that. One ancestor married a Presbyterian and got kicked out of the Quakers.

The family fortunes seemed to have declined, and my line moved to Arkansas for a few generations. The only nagging question left for me is the date of death of my great great Grandfather and the circumstances. (And why he was named "Egbert", it's not surprising that he's the only one!)

Anyway, the point I wanted to get to, is that after all this struggle for bits of information, you come to a point  where you start intersecting with other peoples trees and are suddenly FLOODED with new distant relations and the information about them. And every time you enter them, Ancestry.com gives you new links, which lead to even MORE new relations. These people knew how to have babies! I'm talking about 8-10 with the first wife, then a few more with the next! Then maybe 60% live to breed and have another 8-12 kids!

So I've stopped entering "new" people, unless someone shows up who is "closely" related or otherwise interesting. I have one relation with the nickname "the kid" who was killed by a bushwacker. I'm guessing that nickname predisposes you to that sort of thing, versus longevity. Another was a minister who founded a church in Arkansas, who was kicked out of the same church for drunkeness.

It's been interesting.