Randy has his Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge at GeneaMusings out early today, so I thought that I’d get right on top of it. This week’s challenge is based on Crista Cowan’s blog post Family History All Done? What’s Your Number?
The idea that a family history could be all done boggles my mind. I’ve been at it 22 years and while some lines are more done than others, most are half baked.
In this challenge, I’m supposed to calculate just how done my tree is. This will be based on 10 generations. Thank goodness it’s only 10 because the Portuguese side of my tree goes out 32 generations and math is not my strong point.
First, let’s see how many people I have in each generation.
First…1
Second…2
Third…4
Fourth…8
Fifth…14
Sixth…28
Seventh…45
Eighth…61
Ninth…40
Tenth…40
Total…243
The majority of this number comes from my French and Portuguese lines. I lose the English/Welsh/Australian line after the fourth generation and the Irish are gone in the seventh.
When I calculated this, I added in people known by a surname or a first name only, but not the people who have ??? ??? for a name (meaning I don’t have a name, though I could have other information.) I decided to count the surnames only because in both my French and Portuguese lines surnames are not necessarily handed down. This means that I had to find some reference to the varying surname in a record in order to have recorded it. There were only about four of these in the first 10 generations, so it doesn’t affect my number greatly.
Next, I need to calculate what percentage of done that I am. This is based on 10 generations having 1,023 people. My percentage comes out to 23.75%
Some of these holes will be filled in when I finish my massive input backlog. However, I fear the Jackson, Jones, and Kelly/Dolan lines will be lucky to add another generation. Harry Jackson left no evidence that he had parents, though I suspect he did. The Jones migrated from England and/or Wales to Australia, and then, to San Francisco within a 15 year span. Finding their earliest point in San Francisco took 15 years. The Kelly’s and Dolan’s? Well, they’re the Kelly’s and Dolan’s. They’ve left me a difficult trail to follow having arrived in San Francisco in the 1850s and prior to that living in at least two states over 3-4 years.
Looks like I’ve got some work to do! Though, wouldn’t it be sad if I was really and truly done?
