Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Your Ancestor Score for 2022

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!

Our mission this week from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, is to:

1)  Determine how complete your genealogy research is.  For background, read Crista Cowan's post Family History All Done? What’s Your Number? and Kris Stewart's What Is Your Genealogy "Score?"  For comparison purposes, keep the list to 10 generations with you as the first person.  

2)  Create a table similar to Crista's second table, and fill it in however you can (you could create an Ahnentafel (Ancestor Name) list and count the number in each generation, or use some other method).  Tell us how you calculated the numbers.

3)  Show us your table, and calculate your "Ancestral Score" - what is your percentage of known names to possible names (1,023 for 10 generations).

Here's mine:

I did not do this challenge back in 2016, so I have nothing to compare to. I know that I have not added generations to my tree in a long time except in the GORRELL line in Pennsylvania. I have been focusing on filling in the stories of the more recent generations. But I decided to do the challenge to have a record of my ancestral score.

I made the chart by hand because what Randy described did not seem to work in RootsMagic 7, which I am still using. Instead, I used the pedigree chart and worked through each generation, counting how many I have found.

I also am starting with my daughters as no. 1, so I can reflect both my side and my husband’s side, since I research both lines equally.

Generation	Relationship	Possible People No.  – Sum 1		Identified People No. – Sum 2		Percentage 100* (Sum2/Sum1)
1	You	1	1	1	1	100.00%
2	Parents	2	3	2	3	100.00%
3	Grandparents	4	7	4	7	100.00%
4	1x G-Grandparents	8	15	8	15	100.00%
5	2x G-Grandparents	16	31	16	31	100.00%
6	3x G-Grandparents	32	63	32	63	100.00%
7	4x G-Grandparents	64	127	55	118	92.91%
8	5x G-Grandparents	128	255	63	192	75.29%
9	6x G-Grandparents	256	511	40	232	45.40%
10	7x G-Grandparents	512	1023	22	254	24.82%

My Ancestral Score for 10 generations is:
* number of known ancestral names is 254, the number of possible is 1023, so the ancestral name number for ten generations is 254/1023 = 24.82%.

My numbers drop off fast at a couple of locations:

--On my father’s side, I do not know the parents of Irish-born Jerry and Mary (Sheehan) Sullivan of County Cork.  Nor the Irish-born parents of Martin & Ann Gleeson and John Tierney & Ann Murray, probably of County Tipperary. I also do not know the parents of German-born Susanna Raduntz, who lived in Schneidemuehl, Prussia. Or the parents of Christoph Siewert & Anna Marianna Ewald, also living in Schneidemuehl.

--On my husbands’ father’s side, there are gaps in his Swedish Nilsen line, not knowing the parents of Anders Peter Johansson and his wife Anna Larsdotter, who lived in Rappestad, Östergötland, Sweden. This is an area I could attend to locate their origins. There are also gaps for the parents of James Davey & Elizabeth Hocking, and Edward Nicholas and Susanna Phillips, all of County Cornwall in England. I also don’t have parents for Sarah Milholland and Sarah Duffield. These women were living in Pennsylvania and may have originated in Virginia.

--My mother’s side goes deep in American history, but all in the south, where some lines have dead ends, such as the parents for Samuel Johnston and his wife Elizabeth McCormack; and Benjamin W. Jones, who was married to Amanda A. Haley. Lots of gaps in the 5x-great-grandparents of my children.

I need some work products for my BCG renewal in two years. Perhaps one of the missing links would be a great place to start.

Copyright © 2022 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.