It sometimes seems in the daily following of elusive ancestors that no progress will ever be made. And yet, when you lay it all out in a chart, year by year, some progress starts to be visible in the number of ancestors found.

Who Counts

I confess that there are no doubt some people on this chart who are counted as “found” when I have scanty information–perhaps only a name. In a woman’s case that may be only a first name because maiden names have a way of disappearing when a woman marries. However, in counting up the “finds” this year, I have tried to be honest and put a question mark on my tree in front of a name that is just a name without a story. And I have not counted those question marks.

Ancestry continues to tempt with their shaking leaves (hints of information possibly tied to a particular person.) And this year they came up with an even more insidious way to lead people astray. Now they show you “possible parents”. The catch is that Ancestry gives you no evidence to go with that “possible” and many if not most of those “possibles” were derived from family trees that were likewise unsourced. Sometimes I make a note of the name and try to track it down, but I’m not adding a person to my lineage if I have no proof.

Reading the Chart

In the chart below, I am the “child”. I am happy to have 100% of my ancestors through my Great-Great-Grandparents, but the percentage drops in half with my 3 times great grandparents. Unfortunately, the names I would most like to follow–my maiden name Kaser, and my mother’s maiden name Anderson–are the ones that are most elusive.. My father had a 2x great grandfather and a great-grandmother that defy tracing. And my mother had a 2x great-grandfather whose parents cannot be identified. And those three people snowball into the many, many others farther back that are missing from my tree.

However, to look on the bright side. How many people have the names of 17 of their 13x great grandparents? And besides, as much fun as enumerating ancestors found, I still have a blog-full of great stories about those ancestors. And that is the most important thing to me. For instance, just looking at the numbers does not tell you that nearly all these ancestors through the 12 or 13th generation are natives of North America or were the pioneer of their line. For that, you need to read the stories.

Ancestors by the Numbers

In this chart, the first set of numbers (after the possible number of each generation) is ancestors found as of July 2016. While I have been telling stories here for nearly five years, I only started counting finds for two and a half years. A Caveat–my math is really terrible, even when I’m working with a computer spread sheet I can make mistakes. So please forgive.

GENERATION	RELATIONSHIP	Number of People Possible	Known # of People 7-2016	Percentage	Known # of people 02-2019	Percentage
1	Child	1	1	100.00%	1	100.00%
2	Parents	2	2	100.00%	2	100.00%
3	Grandparents	4	4	100.00%	4	100.00%
4	Great Grandparents	8	8	100.00%	8	100.00%
5	2X Great Grandparents	16	16	100.00%	16	100.00%
6	3X Great Grandparents	32	16	50.00%	23	72.00%
7	4x Great Grandparents	64	21	33.00%	32	50.00%
8	5x Great Grandparents	128	22	17.00%	34	26.50%
X	RUNNING TOTAL	255	90	35.00%	120	47.00%
9	6 x Great Grandparents	256	15	0.06%	26	10.00%
10	7 x Great Grandparents	512	21	0.04%	38	0.07%
X	RUNNING TOTAL	1023	126	12.00%	184	18.00%
11	8x Great Grandparents	1024	13	0.01%	34	0.03%
12	9x Great Grandparents	2048	12	0	26	0.01%
13	10x Great Grandparents	4096	10	0	38	0
14	11x Great Grandparents	8192	2	0	37	0
15	12x Great Grandparents	16384	0	0	33	0
X	RUNNING TOTAL	32767	153	0.00%	352	1.07%
16	13x Great Grandparents	32768	0	0	17	0
17	14x Great Grandparents	65536	0	0	4	0
18	15x Great Grandparents	131072	0	0	0	0
19	16x Great Grandparents	262144	0	0	0	0
20	17x Great Grandparents	524288	0	0	0	0
21	18x Great Grandparents	1048576	0	0	0	0
22	19x Great Grandparents	2097152	0	0	0	0
X	TOTAL	4194303	153	0.00%	373	0.00%

Thanks to Cathy-Meder Dempsey and her blog Opening Doors in Brick Walls, I was reminded that I had not checked my Ancestor score lately to see how many ancestors found. So, this one’s for you, Cathy.