Saturday, April 8, 2017

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- A Family's Increase

Hey genea-folks, 
it's Saturday Night again, 

 time for more Genealogy Fun!

 


Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:


1) Pick one of your sets of 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 List report in RootsMagic 7.  Then I counted each generation on my fingers.

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


1. Children = 9 (all deceased)
2. Grandchildren = 18 (all deceased)
3. Great-grandchildren = 20 (11 living, 9 deceased)
4. Great-great-grandchildren = 36 (34 living, 2 deceased)
5. 3rd great-grandchildren = 35 (all living)
6. 4th great-grandchildren = 7 (all living)
7. 5th great-grandchildren = 0

4) So the increase is at least 125 persons, and probably more. I have met 50 out of the 87 still alive. I met 15 out of the 38 that are now deceased, and 9 of the deceased died before I was born. So that leaves at least 37 still alive that I have not met, and most of them are younger than me.

My problem isn't with the ones I know about - it is trying to trace the lines that I lost after the 1940 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 more 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 two do I know of great-grandchildren. 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, family history and DNA testing.



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Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

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15 comments:

Dorene from Ohio said...

Randy , What a great edition of SNGF! Here is mine:

http://graveyardrabbitofsanduskybay.blogspot.com/2017/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-april-8.html

Mary Rohrer Dexter said...

Here is mine for this week. http://skeezicks1957.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-familys-increase-saturday-night.html

Mary Rohrer Dexter said...

Randy, since your great grandparents had nine children you really have your work cut out for you! Cool that you have gathered all the info that you have so far. Hope you find contacts for the rest.

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

My great-grandparents were a lot younger than yours so I have fewer descendants. I have some work to do.

http://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2017/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-familys.html

GeneGinny said...

My family tree is much leaner than your's, Randy. Only 48 known descendants of my "bushiest" line.
https://geneginny.blogspot.com/2017/04/sngf-family-numbers.html

Lois Willis said...

Here's mine - 248 descendants and counting
https://loiswillis.blog/2017/04/09/sunday-afternoon-genealogy-fun-a-familys-increase/

Janice M. Sellers said...

This was a fun exercise! Wow, Lois -- 248 descendants?! Here's my contribution:

http://www.ancestraldiscoveries.com/2017/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-familys.html

Suzanne McClendon said...

My great-grandparents are approximately 34 (Grandpa) and 43 (Grandma) years younger than yours. You're about a year older than my mother. :)

I didn't necessarily go with the line which *seemed* the most prolific. I went with the line for which I have the most readily available information. It seems many of my forefathers/mothers were opposed to listing people other than the decedent in the obituaries. At least these two great-grandparents gave me a grandkid count in theirs.
Here is the link to my post: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Have a blessed Sunday!

Linda Stufflebean said...

Here is my post. I have to admit that I have little info on the most current generations of 2x and 3x great grandchildren. Guess I better get busy and find them!
http://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2017/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-a-familys-increase/

Anonymous said...

Here's mine! Those pesky recent generations, family locations, and past family "drama" sure make it hard to have a current living accurate tree.

https://relativeshisandhers.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-a-familys-increase/

minkyadu said...


Here is mines.
https://shelleyskylinejourney.com/2017/04/09/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-a-family-increase-april-8-2017/

Nancy Ward Remling said...

I gave up on trying to count mine as I got mixed up in all the directions they were going: https://remlinggenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/04/saturday-challenge-great-granparents.html

Mary Rohrer Dexter said...

Declutter- you did a great job with the charts and figuring out the information for all your great grandparents along with your spouses too! Very nice. Also I agree with the younger generation not only being very diversified as far as locations but often do not get married. Of if they do get married then, like me, they might not stay married the first time or so. It makes it complicated for sure.

Mary Rohrer Dexter said...

Doreen - are you going to be at the OGS conference later this month? I will be there just on Saturday. It is in Sandusky. Last year was my first year to attend. It was near me last year. And I enjoyed it so much I want to go back to at least part of it this year. I hope you investigate going if you had not thought of it.

Mary Rohrer Dexter said...

I think I have made it around to every one and left comments on either their post or here regarding their posts. Thanks to every one who stopped by mine and left a note.