Happy New Year, Everyone!
This year I am not going to do New Year’s resolutions or intentions on the blog. Of all the intentions I set out in a post last January, I completed one: my photography 365 Project. In doing that project, I found that I had very little time for genealogy, and now I am craving more time spent on it. Consequently, I’m hoping to be able to write up more ancestor profiles, and other tidbits, this year, too. I’ll be working on the ancestor lines at the points where I got stuck the last time through, so we’ll see where that takes me. Hopefully, I’ll make more headway this time as more records have been digitized.
Just after Christmas, I received a manila envelope from one of Mom’s cousins, R. (F.) M. Containing a folder of genealogy material, letters, and pictures, from her mom’s side of the family – which is the side we share. I’ve been having so much fun going through it, and trying to see where the information fits into my tree!
One of my brothers recently asked me how many direct line ancestors I had found. I had to tell him I didn’t know without turning on the computer and counting. Ancestrydotcom counts how many people I have in my tree, but since I do a lot of collateral research that doesn’t actually help me determine how many people have I have found in the direct line. [Aside: I don’t understand how people who only research their direct line ever find their direct line people; most of the jumps in generations I’ve been able to make have come from research I’ve done on brothers and sisters of my direct line ancestor.] But now I can answer him here!
Yesterday, I saw a post on the blog Twisted Twigs on Gnarled Branches on tallying up your family tree, in which she explained an easy way how to do that if you use ancestrydotcom. So, this morning I tallied my direct line ancestors, and this post is for you M! I chose to include only those ancestors I am certain of. On some of my lines I’ve got some possibilities that I’m exploring, but until I am more certain, I decided not to include them in this tally – maybe in 12 months I can do a year-end tally and if they made the cut, my percentages will go up.
MATERNAL SIDE
(This is using Mom as a starting point, and thus the “parents” listed are my grandparents; so each one of these numbered levels would be one level greater, or higher, from me and my brothers.)
|
Generation
|
Actual Number
|
Number Found
|
percentage
|
|
Parents
|
2
|
2
|
100%
|
|
Grandparents
|
4
|
4
|
100%
|
|
Great-grandparents
|
8
|
8
|
100%
|
|
2nd great grandparents
|
16
|
16
|
100%
|
|
3rd great-grandparents
|
32
|
12
|
37.5%
|
|
4th great-grandparents
|
64
|
8
|
12.5%
|
|
5th great-grandparents
|
128
|
0
|
0%
|
|
6th great-grandparents
|
256
|
0
|
0%
|
|
7th great-grandparents
|
512
|
0
|
0%
|
|
Total
|
1022
|
50
|
4.89%
|
PATERNAL SIDE
(This is using Dad as a starting point, and thus the “parents” listed are my grandparents; so each one of these numbered levels would be one level greater, or higher, from me and my brothers.)
|
Generation
|
Actual Number
|
Number Found
|
percentage
|
|
Parents
|
2
|
2
|
100%
|
|
Grandparents
|
4
|
4
|
100%
|
|
Great-grandparents
|
8
|
8
|
100%
|
|
2nd great grandparents
|
16
|
16
|
100%
|
|
3rd great-grandparents
|
32
|
17
|
53.13%
|
|
4th great-grandparents
|
64
|
5
|
7.81%
|
|
5th great-grandparents
|
128
|
0
|
0%
|
|
6th great-grandparents
|
256
|
0
|
0%
|
|
7th great-grandparents
|
512
|
0
|
0%
|
|
Total
|
1022
|
50
|
5.08%
|
Obviously, I’ve still got a lot of work to do, but I’ve only been doing it for about four years, off and on. Looks like I've got lots more years of fun to come!
P. S. For those of you curious as to how many people overall are in my Ancestrydotcom tree, here are my tree stats: 2374 people, 7776 records, 569 photos (only a small proportion of the photos are of people, unfortunately).
Happy New Year, Jo, Looking forward to your stories in 2017. Your 'numbers' are quite impressive!
ReplyDeleteBut every time someone contacts me to see if we're related, I can't tell because I haven't gotten far enough back to be able to make a connection to this new person. So the numbers don't feel impressive to me. It's just that I come from long lines of farmers with huge amounts of kids, who all had lots of kids, who then each had lots of kids.... the tree is wide but not tall. (Can you tell I'm feeling stuck?)
DeleteI agree, your numbers are impressive. I doubt mine are anywhere near yours...but I'm only 20 years into genealogy .
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm pretty sure you've got a husband and kids to tend to that take up a bit of your time as well. I don't have either. Most of your research would have been done (and maybe still is) pre- consolidated digital databases too, which is harder and requires far more patience -- I truly respect that those that do that type of research, which I haven't had to do much of yet. I'm just starting with that sort a bit now. My tree is wide (lots of farmers who had lots of kids, and they had lots of kids, and... and...) but not so tall. Every time someone contacts me to see if we're related, I haven't gotten far enough back to tell. It's frustrating. Especially as I seem to be stuck at the moment, on multiple lines. (I'm also not certain of Ancestry's numbers given the problems they've been having recently-- I may have to correct them later.)
DeleteOh, good! I can't wait for more stories about your family. You do such a great job of portraying them as people and not just names and dates. Best of luck to you this year!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Janice. That's really what I try for. :) My family has told me that they like stories and to know how people fit in history (even if they aren't famous; bit "the begats" are boring, lol.
ReplyDelete