So. Much. More. Research. To. Do!
start with a printout
It is said that ‘genealogy never ends’. You get one generation back, then you suddenly double the number of people to research on the following one. Not to mention following the the siblings, and the side branches as well. So it’s true … it doesn’t.
And anyone who says it does, should take part in this “Ancestor Tally” or “Ancestor Tracking” geneameme which I’ve seen on a few blogs now (Twisted Twigs on Gnarled Branches, and Michael Dyer’s Family Sleuther), so I thought I’d play along and see what my 15 or so years of on-off research shows.
In short it shows that I need to spend a whole lot more time researching!
So the idea is to count up the number of direct line ancestors you can identify going back10 generations (starting from yourself). So I sat down, printed out a 10 generation ancestral chart (4 pages so it wasn’t too bad), counted them up generation by generation … and wallah … I have the numbers, which I then also converted to percentages.
As you can see from the numbers I’m not doing too bad till I reach my the 7th generations (4x great grandparents). Part of that is probably due to the fact that I just haven’t entered some info (I really find the search more interesting than the entering, do others find that too?), but it does also highlight that a LOT more research is still to be done.
It’ll happen bit-by-bit. Another name here, another date there, or something verified so I can add it in. We all know it’s a slow process. That’s just the way of proper genealogy.
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4 Responses to “So. Much. More. Research. To. Do!”
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Well done! I’m just about to post mine too. I forced myself to do 2…you’ll see why 🙂
Thanks Caitie. It was an interesting exercise to do. Though I was a little surprised (and disappointed) when the percentages went right down after 7th gen. But hey, it’s something to keep working on.
Looks like you’re doing pretty good to me! Congrats and good luck with your research in 2017. Here’s hoping all of our percentages increase in the coming year.
Thanks Michael, it’ll be nice to hopefully get a few more names added to the tree during the year.