Level Up Challenge – 2024

Yvette Hoitink in her blog Dutch Genealogy, wrote a post “Six Levels of Ancestral Profiles – Level Up Challenge!” at the beginning of 2021. In the post, she listed the six levels. I have summarized them here: 

Level 0: Know nothing about the ancestor
Level 1: Know their name only
Level 2: Know their vital statistics
Level 3: Know their occupation, residence, children, and spouses
Level 4: Know they owned land, served in the military, their religion, and possible criminal activity
Level 5: Exhaustive research has been conducted to meet the GPS. This includes knowing their parents, resolving any conflicts, and writing up a conclusion.
Level 6: Written a biography with historical context

I decided to see where I stood with this Level Up Challenge. I started by printing out the Ahnentafel report from my RootsMagic database out seven generations, as that is the limit of the chart from Yvette’s blog to help me track the levels. I recorded Ahnentafel numbers for each of my ancestors, but since my database starts with my daughter, all the numbers are off by a generation. I will do the same challenge for my husband’s ancestors. It will be interesting to see where I need to do more work.

Yvette’s Excel file is interactive and when I place the level number in the box for the Ahnentafel number, the box is colored. Also, the average in the right-most column changes giving the average of the numbers in each generation. The goal would be to average out to 6 in each generation.

For some of my ancestors, it was difficult to decide between two numbers. I might know something at a higher level but do not have all the information at the lower level. In that case, I chose the lower level. I feel I should have higher levels for my parents and grandparents, but I realized I do not have the documentation for many of the events listed at level 4 and I have not written proofs.

Here is my chart filled out:

The ancestors colored green (level 5) are those I wrote up for my BCG certification renewal. Most of the red 0s are either my Irish ancestors, my Posen ancestors, or my brick walls in the South.

My husband’s chart looks like this:

The level 6 boxes are due to the KDP I wrote for my original portfolio. His zeros are due to brick walls in Swedish and English records.

I shall post these charts on my bulletin board above my desk and when I am wondering what to do next, I can pick an ancestor to work on. I had made goals this year to write more biographies, so this chart will also help with that.

#Level-upChallenge

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