Saturday, January 15, 2011

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Ancestral Name List Roulette

It's Saturday Night again - time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) How old is one of your grandfathers now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel"). Who is that person?

3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."

4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook note or comment, or as a comment on this blog post.

5) If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then spin the wheel again - pick a grandmother, or yourself, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, or even your children!
Here's mine: 

My grandfather, Frederick Walton Seaver was born in 1876, so he would be 134 years old today.  Divided by four, that's 33.5, so I'll round it off to 34.

#34 in my Ancestral Name List is  Alpheus B. Smith, son of Aaron Smith and Mercy Plimpton was born on 19 May 1802 in Medfield, Norfolk, Massachusetts, USA. He died on 13 January 1840 in Medfield, Norfolk, Massachusetts, USA. He married Elizabeth Horton Dill on 30 November 1826 in Dedham, Norfolk, Massachusetts, USA.

Three facts about Alpheus:

*  Alpheus B. Smith owned land in Medfield, described as a house and barn and about 16 acres of land (from the inventory of his estate).

*  Alpheus B. Smith died intestate and insolvent and his administrator had to sell the land. 

*  I don't know what Alpheus Smith's middle name is... I'm going to guess that it is Barber after his great-grandmother, Ruth (Barber) Smith, wife of Henry Smith. 

Unfortunately, I picked one of the few ancestors that I do not have much information about!  But the review of the information was extremely profitable - I have a Genea-gasm coming on, I think! 

13 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey Randy, great idea for a game! I'm playing along, I posted my response over at my blog here.

Brian Zalewski said...

That was fun to do. I like those pseudo-random games. My post: Ancestral Roulette

Tonia said...

This was a fun one. Thanks Randy!

http://www.toniasroots.net/2011/01/15/ahnentafel-roulette/

Unknown said...

I had a good time with this one, thanks Randy! Incidentally, I think we should work to get "Genea-gasm" in the dictionary. http://aremyrootsshowing.blogspot.com/2011/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-ancestor.html

Greta Koehl said...

Thanks, Randy. I had to make two tries; it's at http://gretabog.blogspot.com/2011/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-ancestral.html.

grace said...

Mine is up on my blog. Of course I picked an ancestor that really is a mystery.

http://myfamilyrootsrundeep.blogspot.com/2011/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-ancestral.html

Linda McCauley said...

Turns out I don't know much about #34. http://tiny.cc/56yod Thanks Randy.

Anonymous said...

Here's my post about ahnentafel roulette. Here's my post

Jean said...

This was indeed another fun one! My blog post is here.

JenS said...

I enjoyed playing along for the first time! Here's my post: http://bit.ly/ekYsrk
Thanks!

Henk van Kampen said...

I'll play, here. Thanks, Randy!

David said...

Hey! I love this game :-)
For me, my maternal grandfather would now be 67 years old (born in 1942).
67/4=16.75
So I choose n°17.
It's Marie Amélie MATHIEU, born in 1963 in Hadol (Lorraine, France), and died before 1916. She married Louis Nicolas POIROT in 1885 (22 years old), and they had 10 childrens between 1884 and 1903!
http://gw0.geneanet.org/index.php3?b=david885&lang=fr;pz=david+noel;nz=poirot;ocz=0;p=marie+amelie;n=mathieu

Donna - What's Past is Prologue said...

Randy,

My post is here.

Donna