Saturday, October 17, 2009

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - A Family's Increase

Hey, genealogy fans, it's Saturday Night! Time for some Genealogy Fun!

Your task, if you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music), is to:

1) Pick one of your four great-grandparents - if possible, the one with the most descendants.

2) Create a descendants list for those great-grandparents either by hand or in your software program.

3) Tell us how many descendants, living or dead, are in each generation from those great-grandparents.

4) How many are still living? Of those, how many have you met and exchanged family information with? Are there any that you should make contact with ASAP? Please don't use last names of living people for this - respect their privacy.

5) Write about it in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or in comments or a Note on Facebook.

Here's mine:

1) I chose my great-grandparents, Thomas Richmond (1848-1917) and Julia (White) Richmond (1848-1913).

2) I made a descendants chart in RootsMagic 4.

3) Their descendants, that I am aware of, number by generation:

1. Children = 9 (all deceased)
2. Grandchildren = 18 (all deceased)
3. Great-grandchildren = 15 (14 living, 1 deceased)
4. Great-great-grandchildren = 22 (21 living, 1 deceased)
5. 3rd great-grandchildren = 34 (all living)
6. 4th great-grandchildren = 4 (all living)
7. 5th great-grandchildren = 0

4) So the increase is at least 102 persons, and probably more. I have met 57 out of the 73 still alive. I met 11 out of the 29 that are now deceased, and 9 of the deceased died before I was born. So that leaves at least 16 still alive that I have not met, and all of them are younger than me and they probably don't have family information to pass on.

My problem isn't with the ones I know about - it is trying to trace the lines that I lost after the 1930 census - descendants of my grandmother's siblings. I know that there should be more persons on this list - I just don't have the second and third cousin contacts I need.

I need to find descendants of:

* Walter Pickford (1864-1918) and Anne Richmond (1869-1939),
* Everett Richmond (1875-1917) and Ethel Pierce,
* Alfred Shaw (1884-1919) and Grace Richmond (1876-1963),
* Edwin Richmond (1883-1935) and Alice Corey (1884-1979),
* James Richmond (1885-1913) and Ethel Judson.

Each of these couples had children that I am aware of, but only in two cases do I know names of their grandchildren, and in only one do I know of a great-grandchild. Our line lost track of many of these cousins when my grandparents died.

From the descendants report for my great-grandparents Richmond, I did not count the spouses of descendants of my great-grandparents, since they are not descendants.

While doing this reporting and counting, I figured out some ways to search for some of the "missing" cousins in online vital records indexes, obituaries and gravestones, at the least!

Was this too complicated? I hope not! It's really a straightforward reporting and counting exercise. The point is, of course, to get you to think about aunts and uncles and cousins that you could contact for genealogy records and family history.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

FUn fun FUN, Thanks Randy...

GrannyPam said...

Interesting, but I'm not sure how much fun. I really don't like being reminded of how little I know. Big smile. Mine is here: http://xrl.in/3cvb

Taylorstales-Genealogy said...

Thanks Randy for this Saturday nights genealogy fun. My genealogy "juices" were actually flowing. Good thing I can count too!

BeNotForgot said...

That was work! I do see some lines I need to work on though. Thanks, Randy. benotforgot.com

Grace said...

http://myfamilyrootsrundeep.blogspot.com/2009/10/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-familys.html

Makes me realize I have a lot of cousins to try to find.

Mel said...

Here is mine: http://www.researchjournal.yourislandroutes.com/2009/10/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-how-many-descendants/ It's made me realize that their is one line in the family that I know nothing about.

Evelyn Yvonne Theriault said...

Hello Randy,
I finally managed to get a post in fast enough for your Saturday NightFun!
I haven't answered all your questions yet but hey - it's a start!
Evelyn in Montreal
Link:
http://acanadianfamily.com/2009/10/18/sngf-descendants-of-philippe-theriault-and-his-wives-tharsile-plourde-and-mathilde-theriault/

Leah Kleylein said...

Thanks Randy, these SNGF's are so great for giving me a fresh perspective on my data!

Mavis said...

This was fun only from the aspect of making me realize how huge the family was. Torturous in that it made me realize I still have a daunting task ahead of me. Mine is Satury Into Sunday Genealogy Fun

Midge Frazel said...

It always amazes me that Randy can come up every week with a new way for us to look at the data in our family charts. With this one, I could do some of it without looking at my charts. Certainly Saturday night is not the same anymore.

Claudia said...

If I had those answers most of my brick wall would come tumbling down. LOL

Abba-Dad said...

I did mine on Saturday, but forgot to add it. Could only come up with 41 descendants:

http://dream-of-genea.blogspot.com/2009/10/sngf-familys-increase.html

rozek19 said...

http://blog.mrog.org/508/przyrost-rodziny-ludwika-kalinowskiego (in Polish language)