How Many Descendants Might Your Ancestors Have - Chart Included

I have one large family example and one small family example that are pretty good going back.  My goal is to determine a way to approximate how many descendants a degree of great-grandparent might have.  They obviously will vary and I am sure my families are not the absolute lower and upper bounds and my sample size is 2 lines and 8 generation differences.  So the small sample size makes this example very inaccurate as a true average, but it could be the basis to build a better sample size. 

This sample uses my Miley and Schmitz lines, again, one family line for the last 5 generations has been fairly small, and other family line for the last 5 generations has been fairly large.

The data:

Miley Line:

Generation and descendant count, with a percentage of each generation to the last:

Miley - person: descendants: percent

·       Gary:10 (my dad)

·       Dick: 16 : 160%

·       GLS: 48 :300%

·       James Jr: 80: 166%

·       James Sr : 199 :249%

Schmitz- - person: descendants: percent

·       Darlene: 10 (my mom)

·       Don: 51 : 510%

·       JWS: 72 : 141%

·       Phil: 186 : 258%

·       Nik: 391 :210%

We can now see our percents vary wildly and the percents between generations descendant counts range from 510% to 160% in our example.  This is a large swing, but notice that the numbers do not appear to be progressive and the percentage numbers do not appear to be exponential while the descendant counts clearly are.  This means that an average should be possible but realize our sample size is only 8.

Our set:  160%, 300%, 166%, 249%, 510%, 141%, 258%, 210%

Average:  249.25%

Meaning, in my example each generation’s descendants is best guessed as 249.25% of the previous generation.

We can extrapolate this to X generations to get a very rough guess at how many there might be:

Generations and descendant count guesses based on my small example:

1 (my dad)	10
2 ( gpa)	24.925
3 (gr-gpa)	62.1255625
4	154.8479645
5	385.9585516
6	962.0016898
7	2397.789212
8	5976.489611
9	14896.40035
10	37129.27788
11	92544.72513
12	230667.7274
13	574939.3105
14	1433036.231
15	3571842.807
16	8902818.196
17	22190274.35
18	55309258.83
19	137858327.6
20	343611881.6

Anyone Have Ideas on Trying to Collaborate with Germans?

There are a lot of Germans who do great genealogy and have created masterful works and completed amazing projects, but they don't always like to help you with yours, even if the person you are asking is the resident expert in the area or wrote the local Famlienbuch.  I have even tried to offer them hundreds of dollars in advance and really don't have much luck with them. 

Most recently I have had the author of a book lie to my face saying he didn't write the book.

I hate to believe that they are that much of a pain to work with.... Does anyone have any ideas on how to better approach German people for genealogy help?

Ancesty.com is Discontinuing Family Tree Maker!!

Citing the decline in the desktop software market Ancestry.com is making one of the stupidest decisions I have ever seen.  They are discontinuing their Family Tree Maker.  Sales will end at the end of this year and support will end in 2017. 

Why is this the worst idea I have seen:

1. I don't know a single serious genealogist that doesn't use some sort of desktop software to organize their database.  They use it to:

• Create charts and reports
• Show a view of a tree for relatives and other people
• Detect anomalies in their tree.

2. FTM downloaded all of the images and media that I attached to my tree automatically.  Now I guess I have to go back and download all of my media that I have been storing inside of Family Tree Maker.

3.  It gave us a good way to use Ancestry but still maintain our data separately and a way that we could be independent from Ancestry's service if we wanted to.

I am pretty mad!


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All of Tom Pick's Eiffel Germany Survey in a Single Downloadable Query-able File!!!

I am very pleased to say I am finished compiling all of Tom Pick's Eiffel Germany Birth and Death survey into a single query-able file, and you can download it right here!

I cannot imagine how long it took Tom to originally put together his website and obtain all of those records.  He will be sorely missed and I only wish he had longer on this earth so he could have done more.  He compiled about 550,000 birth records and many thousands of marriage records from over 650 cities in Germany.  They weren't perfect and there are some errors, but it's an amazingly valuable resource.  His original website with the records in separate city files are here.

The fields in the database are the same as Tom used with explanations are:

MO - Month of birth
DA - Day of Birth
YEAR - Year of Birth
FatherLast - Last name of father
FatherFirst - First name of father
MotherLast - Last name of mother
MotherFirst - First name of mother
Marriage - Marriage date of mother and father(only recorded in one record for each family if he                           found it)
ChildName - First and middle name of child born on date in MO, DA, and YEAR fields
SpouseName - Spouse of child in ChildName field if found

You can download the single file in csv, xlsx (Excel format), or in Access 2013 database format BELOW!!, just click on the blue box.



-Jamie

Chippewa County Wisconsin - Past and Present Volume 1 Digitized and Available Here Free

This is an amazing piece of Chippewa County history and you could previously find Volume 2 for free from Google Books HERE.  Unfortunately you couldn't find Volume 1, or at least I couldn't find it.

So this Summer I borrowed a copy of Volume 1 from the Stanley Area Historical Society and digitized it myself.  I am making it freely available to all who want it since this book was publised in 1913.  That means it is officially public domain and can be freely used and copied.

The link is below will take you to the book.  After entering the folder.  Right click on the PDF file and click download to download the PDF file to your computer.

Location of PDF file.

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FamilySearch.org Has a New Look and Supports Trees!

Unfortunately, I won't be taking the time to enter in all of my people, so this will be much more useful to me once they allow uploading of GEDCOM files.  I will have to check this out with a small sample of people and let you guys know about my thoughts on the basic features of the tree.

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Ancestry.com's AncestryDNA Tests are Now Available Without Invitation

Ancestry.com has now officially opened the floodgates on their new AncestryDNA autosomal DNA test.  It costs $129 ($139 with tax and shipping), which is more expensive than the $99 dollars they offered it for during their invite only period.

Now, you can also order more than one test, although I could only order one at a time when I tried.  That just meant I had to go in and place four separate orders. :)

- Happy Wednesday!