Long roots

I'm been slightly, OK, REALLY distracted lately trying to get my Family Tree cleaned up. I've got over 11,000 people in there from both my side and my wife's side, including all known siblings or every relative I can find (they'll help me find even more later). I'm having fun and learning a lot, but it's kinda tedious.

I've build my tree by merging and inputting data from many sources, electronic and otherwise. There've been many people who've helped me get the tree to where it is today... but too many hands in the pot means that not everyone did things the same way, let alone how I did. Some people and sources were REALLY meticulous about sourcing the data, others, including me at times, have not been so careful.

I'm working right now on cleaning up the places associated with events in my tree -- births, marriages, deaths, burials, etc. Family Tree Maker has a location repository of some 300,000+ places that helps standardize the locations so that it can then display them on a map or report. For most of the 3000+ places referenced in my tree it found the appropriate place. For several hundred others it had a harder time. Interpreting "Grove, near Indy - of cancer" is kinda hard even for me. So, for those I have to break the location apart ("cancer" to Cause of Death, and Grove, IN to the location field where I can safely infer that's what they meant). It's a slow process since I can't necessarily interpret "Battle Creek" the same way for all occurrence. There are six cities named Battle Creek in two countries, so I have to look at each occurrence and see if I can tell which state they are referring to (did all of their other life places occur in one state?) and attack them one by one.

In the end, I think it'll make for a much more accurate and maintainable Tree that anyone else can keep up generations from now (or help me with now). It's worth the work, but reeeeealy ssssssssssssllllllloooooooooow.

Then I have to go back and review all of the alternate facts (different marriage dates, locations, birth locations, etc) for people and find documents to support one or the other. Don't get me wrong, this is really fun, but I can't wait until I get it clean enough that I can focus on finding more new information and people -- copies of immigration papers, wedding pics, obits, occupations, stories, etc... THAT'S when the REAL fun begins!