Monday, March 8, 2010

Dcoumenting 10 Generations Revisited

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I listed my own number of ancestors in each generation in my post Can you document all names back 10 generations? last night. The intent of the post was to raise the question posed by Tamura Jones comment, and to provide my own research as an example, and state my impression that there are few, if any, completed 10-generation charts (all 1,023 names).

My intent was not to imply that "my tree is bigger than yours" or that researchers who are still working on great-grandparents or great-greats are inferior. The fact is that each of us has a unique ancestry, and some ancestors are much harder to find than others. I am often genea-smacked by the efforts of genealogy colleagues and friends that have struggled mightily to go back five and six generations because of the difficulty of the research - African-American, Native-American, Jewish, and Eastern European ancestries come to mind.

Martin Hollick sent an URL to his blog discussing my post - see http://mhollick.typepad.com/slovakyankee/2010/03/documenting-back-10-generations.html . Thank you, Martin.

Tamura Jones sent me a picture of a 12-generation chart from his private research database that is really full of names - only a few small "holes" in the first 10 generations on the chart, starting in the eighth generation. He gave me permission to show it (it was resized so that names are not clearly visible) - see below:



That chart, made by Legacy Charting, is truly impressive to me! There is another generation - children of the #1 person on this chart - that have this ancestry also.

A correspondent asked if all of my "documented ancestors" are fully sourced. Nope, not even close. I admit to being a name-collector in my early research years, and I'm still trying to fixing that with primary information and original sources. Once in awhile, I find a very helpful resource for one of my ancestral families that leads me to records that proves or disproves, to my satisfaction, my ancestral connection. I include those records in my database. Or eliminate the ancestral connection if the records don't prove the connection to my satisfaction.

I showed a 10-generation family tree chart of my father's ancestry in 2006 - see below:



This chart graphically illustrates the "holes" in my father's ancestry. My mother's chart is even more "hole-y." The big "hole" on the left of the chart is the English Richman line, and the two big holes on the right side are the Newton and Dill holes. As you can see, I have a long way to go!

UPDATED 11 a.m. - added the Tamura Jones chart and comments.
UPDATED 1:30 p.m. to fix some errors in the text.

3 comments:

QuiltinLibraryLady said...

"As you can see, I have a long way to go!"------But that's what keeps the fun going. The thrill of the hunt, and all that.

Anonymous said...

How far can we go? Who knows! Can we manage to source 10 generations, let alone 5 or 6? Maybe. But, I'm definitely with Quiltin' LibraryLady - the thrill of the hunt is what keeps the fun going!

The Ancestry Insider said...

Randy,

Please forgive me if I come across as "hole-y"-er than thou. :-)

-- The Insider