Monday, January 5, 2015

The Ancestor Count By Generation

What's Your Ancestor Count?

It's the beginning of a new year and a good time to review what you have accomplished in your ancestral research to date. Sort of get a big picture overview of how far you have come and map out your direction for the coming year. Several bloggers have published posts detailing their ancestral count and I am now curious about my numbers.

In 10 Generations An Individual Has 1,024 Ancestors


Ancestor_Count
I reviewed my Legacy database and I have identified 61 direct line ancestors in 10 generations. That puts my overall completion score at 6%. So. Yeah. I have a long way to go.

I started my genealogy research in October, 2001. That means in a little more than 13 years, I have only found 61 of my direct ancestors. That doesn't sound like a very good success rate (and frustrates me to no end), but identifying a potential ancestor is just the beginning.

Ancestors That Never Allow Us To Prove They Belong


As most of those reading this post know, a researcher can spend weeks, months or even years proving a relationship. And, of course, there are those stubborn ancestors we identify that never allow us to prove they belong to us no matter how much time or effort we devote to them.

I do have more names in my working database (my Ancestry online tree) and a few significant clues to follow up on. But those that I am confident are my ancestor make up the 61 found to date.