Sobering wake up call

Once again, there is much debate, negative and positive regarding the DNA test through ancestry.com.

Crista Cowen posted a most interesting blog that presented a challenge to me. Go read it. I'll wait for you.




Okay, you're back. How did I do? Sigh.

Generation 1-4 I have 15 out of 15 names. 100% Yay.

Generation 5 I have 16 our of 16 names. Another 100%.

Generation 6 I have 28 out of 32 names. Still not bad.

Generation 7 I have 28 out of 64 names. Oops. We dipped way below the 50% mark.

Generation 8, 8 out of 128 names.

Generation 9, 10 out of 256 names.

Generation 10, six out of 512 names.

Out of 1023 direct ancestors, I've found 111 of them. That's a staggering 10.85%. Yes, you did detect just a teeny tiny big of sarcasm there.

There are some holes that I could fill in fairly confidently. However, even if I filled in every blank spot with very likely ancestors, the truth is fairly sad, it might move me up to having located 15% at the most of my direct ancestors.

For those of you not terribly familiar with all this, I am generation one. I have one mother and one father, and they are generation two. Each of them has one more and one father and they are generation three. Each of my grandparents has one mother and one father, for generation four.

Me =1
Mom and Dad = 2
Maternal and Paternal grandparents = 4
Great grandparents = 8
Four generations = 15 people.

All we're looking for in this ten genration chart are the parents of each of our direct ancestors.

The really interesting aspect is when you attempt to figure out what century you'll end up in when finding the tenth generation. We usually think of the age between one generation to the next as 20-30 years. To keep things somewhat uniform, let's average it to 25 years. So, let's say that you were born in the mid 70s. Your parents were probably born in the early 50s, your grandparents around 1925 and your great grandparents around the turn of the century. Using this 25 year theory between generations, the fifth generation, your great, great grandparents should have been born about 1875. The sixth generation about 1850, the 7th 1825, the 8th about 1800, the 9th around 1775 and the tenth around 1750.

The truth is, one some lines it will hold true, and ten generations back will be around 1750 if you were born around the mid 70s. Yet some of your lines will be back into the early 1600s ten generations back. Not everyone married at the age of 24 and reproduced at the age of 25. Some married younger and some married older.

I have a great, great grandfather whose wife was 25 years younger than him. Was she a second wife? I don't know. I can't find proof of another wife, but that doesn't mean an earlier wife didn't exist. It only means I haven't found any evidence there was a wife prior to my great, great grandmother.

Plus, if your direct ancestor is the eldset of 12 children your time line going backwards will be different than if your direct ancestor was the youngest of 12 children.

This is only a range of when how long ago 10 generations happened based on when you were born, not on the harsh reality of when your ancestors were actually born. Ten generations will be around 225 to 350 years ago from when you were born. Let's make it easier and round it to a nice even number of 300 years.

I can account for less than 11% of the people directly responsible for me out of the last 300 years.

The Ancestry.com DNA test goes back several hundred to possibly thousands of years in our genetic ethnicity. Well, guess what? I don't know enough about my cultural ethnicity with the numbers I've just shared to know if my genetic ethnicity is correct or not. 89.15% of my direct ancestors from the last 300 years are completely unknown to me. How can I say the test was wrong? I can't.

What I can say is dang, I'll be some of those 89.15% came from Central Europe.

Anyway, another post hoping to show other genealogist the numbers so maybe they won't be upset by their DNA results. I believe between all the posts I've devoted to this subject lately many aspects have been considered.

But that 10.85% of direct ancestors for ten generations was very sobering to me. I knew I had a long way to go. I didn't realize I'd have to live to be 7,958 to have a chance of finding all of them.