When I began entering my genealogy into PAF in the 1980s I pretty much stopped at my grandparents. Yes, my aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings, are there but not all the children of my grandparents’ cousins. Certainly not their children. Maybe not my cousin’s children. Vaguely there were concerns about privacy but also I wasn’t thinking about contemporaries. I was entering ancestors.

With DNA there is the suggestion you need six generations of complete information. I’m doing ok – with some notable exceptions – until I get to the children of my mother’s first cousins. But say my oldest great nephew wants to do his DNA. Six generations (in our mutual line) would be his mother, his grandfather, great grandmother, great great grandparents, 3rd great grandparents. I know or knew all those people! I have them in my database. But I don’t have all of their descendants. I’d probably recognize the names.

Now add all of his ancestors who married my relatives – his father, other grandparents and so on. I have no clue.

I don’t have an inclination to do any research to get all those people into my database. I could spend the rest of my life working on ancestors and, since I have a choice, that’s what I plan to do. Yes, if the information comes my way I’ll enter it so I can make you a chart. But you have to research it, source it, etc.