What's Your Number?

I first saw it on Pinterest, and since then on numerous genealogy blogs, inculding Olive Tree Genealogy Blog. Everybody's figuring out how many of their ancestors they've identified back to their 7x great grandparents (1022 ancestors in all (not 1024 as everyone keeps saying; do the math!)). What fun!

So I decided to give it a try myself:

Generation Potential Ancestors My Identified Ancestors
Parents 2 2
Grandparents 4 4
Great Grandparents 8 8
2x Great Grandparents 16 16
3x Great Grandparents 32 32
4x Great Grandparents 64 47
5x Great Grandparents 128 38
6x Great Grandparents 256 34
7x Great Grandparents 512 41
Grand Total: 222 out a possible 1022, or just under 22%!

Darn. I started out so strong! 100% out to my 3x great grandparents! But the numbers really started to dwindle as I got further back.

In particular, I noticed my mom's side dropped out of the calculations pretty quickly, other than my direct maternal line which I've put a lot of work into. But all those English lines, they go back to 1830 or so and then things start to get challenging! My dad's side, on the other hand, is all French Canadian, so those lines tend to go back to the 1600s pretty easily.

But I'm not discouraged! I'm still thrilled by how much my tree has grown in recent years, and am excited to see the new directions it will take in the future. (I recently learned I'm part German! Who knew?) Perhaps I'll fill in this table again a year from now and see how far I've come.