Sunday, November 16, 2014

How Big is your Family Tree?


I've read a couple of articles this morning about how many ancestors one person could actually have. Crista Cowan, from Ansestry.com blog, postred an article like this in 2012: Family History All Done? What's Your Number?

Crista concluded that out of 10 generations, she had only found 365 out of 1,023 people, meaning she's only really found 36% of her tree. I wanted to see what my number was.

Here's what mine looks like (I went farther back):



I went all the way back to my 30th great grandparent(s). At this point, if I were to do the math, I've completed less than 1%, which is horribly depressing (LOL), but that is a LOT of numbers...

Let's go with a smaller number, like Crista did:



Here, I went with a smaller number than before, but still bigger than Christa had. So, I have a total number of 8191 possible people to find and I have found 354 people, which equals 4%-- better than 0% :) 

If I do the same percentage as her, then I have 22% completed... I like this percentage better LOL 

I also love the way Crista worded it: "I can only prove out 36% of the people responsible for my existence in the last 300 years. That means that 64% of my ancestry for that same time period is completely unknown to me". This is very well said--- that means, I (Carrie) can only prove out 22% of the people responsible for my existence in the last 300 years! It seems so minuscule compared to how much information I feel I have research and gathered!


2 comments:

  1. Wow! That's really interesting! I think I'll have to give it a try. I don't think my numbers will be near that high... But, it's neat to look at and contemplate!

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    1. Thanks Dana! You should give it a try! Might surprise yourself! :)

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