through dear Aunt Ada.
The hysterical fun of genealogy, or—kissing cousins and worse. It seems 2Oth-great-grandfather Ralph’s father Henry was also related to 20-times-removed Aunt Ada’s stepfather or something like, and the genealogy program wants to take the blood relation of Aunt Ada as more important than the relationship between my 21st-great-grandfather Henry and his own son Ralph, because, yes, 19 times removed is one mathematical step closer than 21 times removed, even if he’s a half first cousin at that remove, rather than a direct great-great-great, etc.-grandfather in line with ME.
Making matters EVEN worse, that’s my
-
father’s
side of the family. On my MOTHER’s side, at several centuries’ remove and completely unexpected, we located a line of ascent going up from one Mary, sweet child, daughter of Captain Humphrey, wife unknown, who is HIMSELF a direct descendant (through another brother of a large family at generation 6) of the SAME 21st-great-grandfather Henry.
Not only that, but Henry is ALSO himself my 20th-great-grandfather in yet another line, because of cousin-marriage, and that line, over centuries, tending to procreate just a little younger than the other one. [You have two grandparents, four great-grandparents, 8 great-great [or 2nd-great] grandparents, and by the time you get to the 20th-great, your number of 20th-great grandparents is quite large—somebody want to work that out? Neighbors married neighbors, people stayed in the same villages, and it just got worse and worse, my friends, until it became a complete tangle. I believe in five more generations, ie, by the 25th, I am likely related to everyone in England.
Jane and I are, by best calculations of the same program, 20th degree cousins…BOTH of us related to Ralph and Henry, or at least to their ancestor Humphrey, not to be confused with Captain Humphrey, but then—we haven’t gotten the Pierces we’re pretty sure we have in common.
Ahah!! I thought I recognised that scenario. I get the feed from those message boards.
lol!
At the level of 20G-grandparents, you have 524,288 of them. With that kind of number, it would be more surprising if you *didn’t* have some doublings-up!
You’re right. I was always terrible at translating word problems into formulas in school! 😉
So, what was the formula you used?
Especially since the population of England was smaller then (although not all were in England)—and most of this lot were concentrated in Devon. I think I’m probably related to everybody in the shire.
According to my calculator, 19 greats (plus 1 grand = 20) is 1,048,576.
@CapnKirk: We’re one step off each other. What did we do different? I have my calculation in a spreadsheet: each column doubles the number of the one before. IE, I am the first generation, so am 1. My parents are the second, so they’re 2. Grandparents are 4. …
I had assume that since 2^3 = 8, that the function was exponential. But 2^4 = 16, but three greats plus one grand is 8, not sixteen. So that’s when I realized my formula was too simplistic. The actual function seems to be 2 + 2 = 4 for two generations, but 8 three. Hmmm. Recursive somehow. My head hurts. I’ll do some more research.
It’s scary, isn’t it? Just one of those guys stepping in front of a cart before reproducing and zingo! no You!
Especially counting that some of my kin kept getting politically involved (and messily executed) —it’s a real good thing they bred young!
If you have a reasonably complete genealogy, you start finding that pattern quite soon. I start to get doubling up about 10 generations back–my parents are 8th cousins. My wife and I start to have common ancestors about 11 generations back. You will also find connections with almost everyone–I’m an 8th cousin of Diana Spencer via my Scots-Irish ancestors.
I don’t have that many fingers and toes! (Only 20.)
I’m not likely to start counting other appendages….
Hmmm….
Gen Num Description
2^0 1 Self
2^1 2 Parents
2^2 4 Grandparents
2^3 8 Great-Grandparents
…
2^F M (F – 3) * “Great” + “-Grandparents”;
// Let G = F + 3;
2^(G + 3) N (G) * “Great” + “-Grandparents”;
…
2^(19 + 3) = 2^22 N[19] = 4194304 (19th Great-Grandparent);
2^(20 + 3) = 2^23 N[20] = 8388608 (20th Great-Grandparent);
2^(21 + 3) = 2^24 N[21] = 16777216 (21st Great-Grandparent);
Interesting Coincidence:
Since 2^24 == 24-bit RGB color, 1 byte each for R, G, B; Therefore, your 21st Great-Grandparents, taken as a set, may represent every unique possible 24-bit color. This is also, coincidentally, more colors than the human eye can perceive. Thus, by a bit of fuzzy-thinking, one may say that your 21st generation of great-grandparents, taken as a set, represent every color in the rainbow.
:biggrin:
Now, if my programming skills were sharper, I’d whip up a short script. Might do that as an exercise later. (I think I remember how to do it in JavaScript. Need to learn PHP.)
But the real question is, who’s providing all the picnic food for the family reunion?!
Say, you have your own colonial survey team, there. All you’d need is a starship and a station….
That’s why I have a paper chart tacked to the wall. It doesn’t care that my grand-father was his own 6th cousin or whatever! Unfortunately I only have room for 8 generations, which with appropriate spacing takes up 16 sheets of paper. Dead-ends have a pink sticky note, lines I know keep on going, and going, and going have green sticky notes.
That would about do it. Mine sprawls—they were a roaming lot, anyway, and so were Jane’s. Mine were colonists, then backwoodsmen and frontiersmen in this country, but not all—a few respectable farmers and cattlemen dot the landscape; Jane’s were generally a college-educated lot, inventors and pharmacists, and a few farmers. It’s interesting how much we do have in common, besides a lot of ancestors from Devon.
The number of duplications in the tree is huge: once you hit one of those well-documented lines, and then realize they duplicate themselves 5 or 6 times, it’s pretty amazing.
The closest relationship I can find between my parents is about 14th cousins, once removed. I suspect they’re actually closer, however, because the man who I suspect is my father’s great-grandfather turns out to be my fifth cousin, five times removed.
I am amused, for reasons having more to do with atevi numerology than anything else.
On my mother’s side, the earliest Humphreys in my tree are around 1600 in Massachusetts, but I haven’t followed that line back to England yet. I don’t bother counting…those darn ancestors just keep going, and going. Barbarians, Templars and sheriffs, most with shockingly short life spans.
I grin everytime I come across your tree in the “hints.”
You know, you really need to write a scene using this idea where someone is explaining interlocking Atevi families to Bren. Might be almost as much fun as the first pizza. Especially since, with his mind, he’d be able to trace some of those lines very quickly. LOL
Or Bren explaining family ties between ship and world humans? The entire idea amuses me for some odd reason.
My line on my father’s side ties back into a president’s line (via an otherwise undocumented secondary source) that first came to North America in 1623 or so, and its been ‘documented’ back until it hits British royalty. I’ve even seen one version that ties back to Adam and Eve. However, I decided that version was certainly a good example of creative writing! One version of my mother’s line includes an ancestor who came to North America with the French trappers in the 1500s, but the other version has my multi-great-grandfather married to his mother, so go figure. It certainly makes it interesting!
There’s a lot of fable in most people’s genealogies. All it takes is an error by someone else and if you accept their work uncritically, you propagate it.
Absolutely. I’ve just found a great-great-grandmother candidate who is simultaneously in Wigan, England, and a remote outpost called Skiddy, Kansas, not easy if you’re an Irish immigrant on limited funds. Since everyone else died in Skiddy, I have a slight feeling somebody pushed a wrong button!
Not to mention my favorite. Everyone should avoid the town of Y, on the Somme River, in Picardie, since everyone who was victimized by a certain button-push on Ancestry managed to die there, even if they were born in really far places. Death-trap, I’m telling you.
Looking at it the otherway around. Over 1million people have your nthgreat uncle Henry as one of their relations too. It’s not that surprising. Given the inbreeding though the actual number will be smaller than the mathematical maximums calculated above.
Archeologists/biologist believe from genetic studies that their was one person that we all have in common as an ancestor. I still can’t quite get my head around that maths, but people whom I trust to know such things assure me it is true.
This makes my head hurt. 😉
BTW, please let me know if you encounter any Bushnells. That’s me.
Dorothy and Elizabeth Bushnell, 17th century.
AT the risk of hijacking the thread:
Herwin, I’m 99.9% certain we are related, because I am so familiar with the Bushnell genealogy. If you are indeed related to me, we are both descendants of Francis Bushnell (1580-1646) who emigrated from England as a young man.
My Great-Aunt Agnes Bushnell had this book in dead-tree format. It is still in the family — and is now digital:
http://www.digital-editions.com/BUSHNELL.htm
I’ve spent hours poring over it: the research is AMAZING. Ebenezer Bushnell did his work on file cards, using carbon paper and a manual typewriter. My mom & aunt are cited — they were children at the time the book was published.
This Pacific Northwest girl has been fortunate enough to visit two of the old family homes (circa 1700) in Old Saybrook, CT, as well as walked among the many grave stones of my ancestors in Old Saybrook. I later correlated several of the names on the headstones to citations in Ebenezer’s book.
If you are who I am quite certain you are: did you know we are related to David Bushnell, inventor of the Turtle? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bushnell
BTW, my branch of the family has a slightly different motto, with an EXTREMELY intriguing story & signet ring. Family legend behind the ring and motto (“Loyal a la Mort”) dates back to the French Huguenots — and I have no reason to doubt the story.
Herwin, you and OSG may be cousins 😉 closer than 19x removed!
Anybody got any Boones, Terrells, Tiptons, Scanlans, Vandeventers, Ferralls, Cages, Duffs, Mortons, Hulls, Banghams, Grissells, Talberts, Roberts, and Stockstills? I won’t list the Smiths—lots of those. Some of my favorite names: Anne Thankfull Hall; Peregrine Smith; Obedience Turpin.
Jane’s: Fancher, MacPhail, Fitch, Tabor, Gardner, Gardiner, Atwood, Giddings, Humphrey (in Essex), Ferrin, Hoyt, Colby, Huntingdon, Tyrell,…one of Jane’s favorites: Bathsheba Fitch.
Boone: George/George/George/Squire/Mary (1735-1819)
Terrill: Mary (1696-?), married a Hersey
Tipton: none
Scanlan: none
Vandeventer: none
Ferrall: none
Cage: Fanny, married a Bridges around 1820
Duff: many
Morton: many
Hull: many
Bangham: Anne (died 1798)
Grissell: none
Talbert: none
Roberts: many
Stockstill: none
Fancher: none
MacPhail: none
Fitch: a number–closely related to the Chases
Tabor: John and Sarah, 18th century
Gardner/Gardiner: a lot. Married into the Hammetts (closely related to the Wolfes)
Atwood: several in the 17th century
Giddings: seven in the 17th-19th century
Humphrey (Essex): a number, married into the Herseys
Ferrin: none
Hoyt: 16th-18th century
Colby: none
Huntingdon: an early English family. A couple of members listed from the 16th century.
Tyrell: five, mostly early.
Line of Benjamin Boone, brother of Squire, sons of George III Boone. Many. Plus one odd Humphrey Boone, who could be out of the first George Boone—there are some male Boones given in Ancestry around then whose first names are not given: he is on my mother’s side, unlike all the rest, was a captain, probably in the American militia, and apparently had no contact with the large clan of Boones who lived in the Yadkin valley. My paternal-line Boones branched out of the Yadkin Valley in the Carolinas and went to Arkansas just before the American Civil War. The Boones were Quakers, or at least Squire was: his sons don’t seem to have followed that too closely. The English Civil War was probably the reason for the emigration—and they dodged the Atlantic coast, which was held by Puritans, and settled inland in Pennsylvania, but John, I think it was, had a falling-out with the Quaker community over his taking a wife without community approval…and the whole lot of them left that area and headed down into the deep woods to carve out their own community, where they multiplied into quite a large family.
Roberts of Truro.
Gardiners out of Hertfordshire
Mortons, several times, mostly out of Gloucestershire.
Cages, out of London.
Fitches, out of Essex.
If you want to compare notes, we’ve got a tangled mess on Ancestry: I didn’t know the program wouldn’t take down old info when you put up new, so…..anything you find under It’s the Eleventh Century and We’re All Barbarians is us.
Are those Humphreys any relation to Duke Humph(f)rey, whose library was the basis for the Oxford Library? 😀