Oh, this is not going to be pretty. Randy Seaver has given a tough one (for me, at least) for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.
Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.
1. How many known ancestors (at least a name) do you have in your generation of 4th-great-grandparents? What about your significant other's generation of 4th-great-grandparents?
2. Tell us how you figured this out and highlight your most recent additions to your list.
3. Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, on this post.
Well. Let's just spit it out.
I use Family Tree Maker 2019. I highlighted myself and went to Publish.
Once there, Charts were automatically highlighted. I clicked on Fan Chart and told FTM to create the chart.
Conveniently, the default was six generations, taking me back to 4th-great-grandparents. Which I counted manually.
And I have a grand total of nine names for the 64 slots. All of them on my father's side of the family.
I think the most recent additions were Stacy B. Lippincott and Alice Parker as the parents of Abel A. Lippincott.
I'm missing quite a few names because I have not yet identified my grandfather's biological father, so I don't even have a name for that great-grandfather.
If I include the information I have for Grampa's adoptive father's family (the Sellers line), that's six more 4th-great-grandparents, for a total of 15.
Absolutely nothing on my mother's side. I do have several 3rd-great-grandparents named, but nothing for the generation previous to that. But her family was Jewish in the Russian Empire, and several of my lines go to Grodno gubernia, where it seems to be a black hole for records for Jews. So I'm not surprised I don't have any names for that generation.
As for my ex, it's even worse. I don't have the names of any 3rd-great-grandparents, much less 4th-great-grandparents. But his ancestry is Irish and Indian (as in India), both notoriously difficult to research.
I suddenly feel very inadequate.
Not all of can have New England colonial ancestors like Randy. Some of us have Irish or English or colonial German, or Jewish like you. It's frustrating, but I just focus on what I can find. You'll find that parent of your grandfather someday.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the support. I know why some of us don't have the same kinds of results, but when it's compared directly, it sure is frustrating. And hey, at least I have found *some* of my 4th-great-grandparents!
DeleteI have a bit more than you on my paternal side, but I've accepted that I'll never have anymore. Those who couldn't read didn't have family Bibles, they didn't own anything so no probate and church records begin in the 1820s. Some branches of the family tree are just like that because of history. However, I think you'll find your grandfather's line someday, too.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the support also. The fact that it's so hard to go further back on many Eastern European Jewish lines is why lots of Jewish researchers end up obsessively researching every descendant of the earliest ancestor they can identify. And I absolutely have not given up on finding that great-grandfather.
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