Thursday, December 6, 2012

How Many Grandchildren of a Person Are In Your Family Tree?

Aaron posted Poll: Largest Number of Grandchildren In Your Family Tree on the MyHeritage Blog yesterday.  I was curious about that...so I decided to exercise my genealogy database by:

*  Find persons with a large number of children (i.e., more than, say, 6).
*  Create a Descendants List report for that person, limiting the generations to 3.
*  Count the third generation persons.

1)  Norman and Sarah (Read) Seaver had (that I know about):


*  They had 8 children
*  They had 50 grandchildren

2)  Martin and Mary (Houx) Carringer had (that I know about):


*  They had 8 children
*  They had 45 grandchildren

One problem is that my database is not complete in having all of the grandchildren of my ancestral families.  I have all of the children (I think), but not all of the children of the children.  Only in my one-name studies do I try to capture the grandchildren.  So that limits it to my Seaver, Carringer, Auble, Dill and Buck surnames.

The book First-publication of the Hildreth family association : genealogical and historical data relating to Richard Hildreth (1605-1693), freeman 1643, Cambridge and Chelmsford, Mass., Thomas Hildreth (died 1657), of Long Island Southampton, N.Y. claims that Richard Hildreth (1605-1693), the immigrant, had 76 grandchildren.  

My Seaver grandparents had only 11 grandchildren, and my Carringer grandparents had only 3 grandchildren.  

How about you?  Do you have ancestors who have over 50 grandchildren?  If so, tell me, and add to the MyHeritage poll results.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/12/how-many-grandchildren-of-person-are-in.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

14 comments:

Bill West said...

My 2x great grandfather Asa Ellingwood had 11 children 66 grandchildren.

Unknown said...

My great grandfather John F. Spurlock had 19 children and 63 grandchildren.

Unknown said...
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John said...

My second great grandfather, Samuel Vanevery, had 23 children. I know of 47 grandchildren. I suspect there are more.

A newspaper article about my wife's second great grandmother's 83rd birthday references 63 children and grandchildren, but I haven't identified all of them.

Elf Flame said...

My great-grandfather's grandfather married twice, and had one daughter out of wedlock. 16 kids total, and a total of 61 grandkids, according to my records. Yikes.

Sebastien Comeau said...

Well the first Comeau that came to America, Pierre Comeau, had 9 children and I count (so far in my research) 89 grandchildren

Linda McCauley said...

My 2x great-grandfather John Covey Howard had 20 children and 81 grandchildren (that I know about). Eight of his children either didn't have any children or I don't know about them.

Mel said...

My great grandparents Theodoro Pacheco and Ana Jacinta de Mello had 8 children and 70 grandchildren. Only one of their children did not have any children (may have died before adulthood).

Sandy Scott said...

My second great grandfather Harrison Shortridge had 9 children and 51 grandchildren.

Sandy Scott said...

My second great grandfather, Hervey Coffin, had 11 children and 58 grandchildren.

Perry said...

My 5x great grandfather, Samuel Pickerill had 12 children and at least 139 grandchildren. My 4x great grandmother Lucy Ann Pickerill Bartholomew had the fewest children of her siblings with only 7!

Marshall said...

My mother has(!) six children and 26 grandchildren (so far).

Aaron Godfrey said...

Hi Randy
One of our readers commented that their great-grandparents had 8 children and 70 grandchildren.

Greta Koehl said...

I'm sure I had a few ancestors with more than 50 children, but the main one I know is Joseph Madison Carroll Norman - 26 or 27 children (3 wives) and 122 grandchildren that I know of.