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.

GFR Family History Month Challenge: Day 5

Check out my Day 1 post to see this challenge from the beginning!

It's time for Day 5 of the GFR Family History Month Challenge! (You may have noticed I missed Day 4. I had a busy day, and also do not have the free time for scrapbooking!) Today's challenge is: Research a collateral ancestor. Who was your great aunt’s husband? What about that gal with the funny name who married your fifth great uncle? Go find out about someone new. Sometimes clues for your own direct line lay buried with those collateral families.

This is actually a topic I quite enjoy. Apparently it's common in the genealogy community to only research your direct ancestors. When I found this out I was thoroughly confused. I never even considered limiting my tree in that way. I do focus on people who are no more than two generations removed from my direct ancestors (by which I mean all of my ancestors' grandchildren), but there are plenty of times when I go off further than that.

Today's challenge prompted me to look through my Watchlist for a name I haven't looked at in a while, though, and I ended up looking at Samuel Cockroft and Martha Ann Shaw. The Cockrofts aren't related to me by blood, but they are blood relatives of my blood relatives. Emmeline Cockroft was my great grandfather's first wife. When she died, Herbert Jackson was left alone with two small children, and he soon remarried to my great grandmother, Janet Aspinall.

Samuel and Martha Cockroft were Emmeline's parents. A quick search on FamilySearch led me to their marriage registration index. So now, if I want, I can order their marriage record, and continue researching the Cockroft and Shaw lines.

GFR Family History Month Challenge: Day 3

Check out my Day 1 post to see this challenge from the beginning!

It's time for Day 3 of the GFR Family History Month Challenge! Today's challenge is: Visit a cemetery you haven't yet to find the headstones of some of your ancestors. Take pictures. Post them on that collaborative site you joined!

After a day filled with work and homework, I'm writing this when it's already pitch black outside and past my bedtime. :) But tomorrow, I'll stop by the Cimetière de Cathédrale de Saint-Boniface, a nearby cemetery that I'm in the process of photographing for the Manitoba Cemeteries Project. As far as I know, I don't have relatives buried there. Or at least, not close ones, but most of the people buried there are French Canadian, and we're totally all related!

Cimetière de Cathédrale de Saint-Boniface also happens to be the final resting place of Manitoba folk hero Louis Riel, who led the Métis in two rebellions against the Canadian government and was executed for treason, yet is widely considered the "Father of Manitoba". He's also, as I recently discovered, my eighth cousin, twice removed!

GFR Family History Month Challenge: Day 2

Check out my Day 1 post to see this challenge from the beginning!

It's time for Day 2 of the GFR Family History Month Challenge! Today's challenge is: Start a One Name Study for one of your unique family names or one of your favorites.

As it happens, I've already done this one, too! I always imagined I'd one day start a One Name Study on the Daigneaults, which would be fairly manageable, but so far I haven't gotten around to it. What I did was start a Jackson study, limited to the Huddersfield and the surrounding area in West Yorkshire.

I started my study because my Jackson line goes back to John Jackson, son of William Jackson, of Huddersfield. The reason it doesn't go back any further is because that area just happens to have Johns and Williams Jackson coming out of its ears. So I started this study to research all of them and tease out the various family groups. It is not easy.

So, since I've already done today's challenge of starting a One Name Study, I'll participate today by doing a bit of work on those John Jackson families.

Do you have a One Name Study? WikiTree has a One Name Studies Project! It's great for working with other people who are also facing the specific challenges of One Names Studies.

GFR Family History Month Challenge: Day 1

For Family History Month (which is October, and I always forget about it), the Global Family Reunion blog is hosting a daily challenge with ways of celebrating your family history.

Day 1's challenge is: Join a collaborative genealogy site to start sharing your research with others.

This one is too easy for me! :) But if you haven't yet joined a collaborative genealogy site, you should! It's a great way to connect with cousins, collaborate on brick walls, and help others connect to their roots, just to name a few benefits!

This is my blog, so I'm allowed to be totally biased and say you should really join WikiTree.com. It's free, has a great Q&A forum called G2G, and has projects for people who share genealogical interests.