Happy New Year!
My first post of 2015 is a little fun - Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, that is. And obviously, Saturday night has now moved into Sunday morning. Better late than never.
+Randy Seaver proposed this latest 'genealogy quest' on his blog and it's a good way to assess my knowns and unknowns.
The proposal is to list the 'known by name' ancestors at each genealogical level: parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. As the potential ancestors double and the available records decrease over time, let's check mine and see where that big research dropoff shows up.
Here's my chart:
I also prepared a similar post last year. And yes, there have been some improvements!
In yellow above are the generations where I found new ancestors. Well, they've always been there but I finally figured out their names ;)
I made a circle chart in my Legacy program to count the knowns and unknowns. My biggest dropoff comes at Level 7, the great-great-great-great-grandparents. Most of my knowns in this period were born in the early 1800's. So it appears I have a real research block beyond that century line.
The records I have the farthest (in fact, to 12 generations) are two French-Canadian lines and one colonial American line. I also have had good luck with my maternal grandmother's Prussian ancestry. I have one ancestral couple identified to the 10th generation and three couples to the ninth generation.
The records I have the most work to do are my dad's paternal Irish lines, where they end at Level 7 across the board. I have no known Irish ancestor born earlier than the early 1800's. [A personal aside: my brother is taking a Y-DNA test, so maybe that will improve things for next year - cross your fingers!]
Last year's total percent known was 16.52. This year's is 19.16, an increase of 27 ancestors.
So I found a few peeps!
Thanks for the idea, Randy!
© 2015 Sally Knudsen
