View Full Version : How well are we doing?
ElizabethHerts
26-11-16, 08:46
After Danny Dyer being able to go back so many generations in his family tree, how well are the members of GF doing?
What is the furthest back you can go in terms of multiple great-grandparents?
I'm in the process of adding up how many ancestors I have accounted for from 7x-great-grandparents backwards.
Not many really compared with some.
I have three 9xg-grandparents on my tree - A couple, Thomas Smith and his wife, Alice Dallam who were buried in Burford Oxfordshire in 1643 and 1670 respectively. They married in 1614 and are the only people on my tree who must have been born in the 16thC.
The other one is James Eglington of Shutford, Oxfordshire who wrote his will in 1667. Probate was granted in 1668 but I don't have a burial (or anything else) for him!
All the above are the ancestors of my 2xg-grandmother, Mary Smith. It's ironic that I have gone back further with this Smith line than most other lines.
I'm in the process of adding up how many ancestors I have accounted for from 7x-great-grandparents backwards.
Oooh, do you have to add them up yourself? My FH program tells me I have:
2 parents
4 grandparents
8 great-grandparents
16 2xg
32 3xg
48 4xg
47 5xg
40 6xg
24 7xg
10 8xg
3 9xg
:D:D:D
ElizabethHerts
26-11-16, 10:40
I have Family Historian, Merry. I wonder if it will calculate for me?
ElizabethHerts
26-11-16, 10:43
Not many really compared with some.
I have three 9xg-grandparents on my tree - A couple, Thomas Smith and his wife, Alice Dallam who were buried in Burford Oxfordshire in 1643 and 1670 respectively. They married in 1614 and are the only people on my tree who must have been born in the 16thC.
The other one is James Eglington of Shutford, Oxfordshire who wrote his will in 1667. Probate was granted in 1668 but I don't have a burial (or anything else) for him!
All the above are the ancestors of my 2xg-grandmother, Mary Smith. It's ironic that I have gone back further with this Smith line than most other lines.
I have Egleton (and variants) ancestors. They lived in Wooton Underwood, Bucks., but one of them married at Bicester, Oxon.
I have Family Historian, Merry. I wonder if it will calculate for me?
lol I've no idea! My program (Brother's Keeper) does a few useful stats and lists etc, but there are far more that would be useful.
ElizabethHerts
26-11-16, 10:56
Merry, I have done a query and it has brought up my ancestors. I had to count them. There must be a way of asking how many 7x-great-grandparents I have, but I haven't got that far!
I have identified 61 7x-great-grandparents, 55 8x-great-grandparents, 40 9x-great-grandparents, 27 10x-great-grandparents, 12 11x-great-grandparents and 4 12-great-grandparents.
I have added most of them in the last couple of years as the early registers have gone on line, but mostly through identifying them by wills.
Some areas of my tree are at a complete standstill.
It's the question people always ask when you mention family history, isn't it? Although as a hobby I think it's much more fun finding extra information over and above basic name and BMD.
A quick look suggests I've found:
8 great grandparents
16 2xggrandparents
28 3xggrandparents
46 4xggrandparents
42 5xggrandparents
46 6xggrandparents
32 7xggrandparents
22 8xggrandparents
14 9xggrandparents
9 10xggrandparents
6 11xggrandparents
5 12xggrandparents
The last few generations are mainly on one line who a) had money and so left Wills b) lived in places with a good run of records
kiterunner
26-11-16, 13:06
I will have to check whether FTM can show me this when I am on the other computer, but just looking at the line which I think goes back the furthest, on my ancestry tree, it is early 14th century 19xg-grandfather John de Bradebrugg of Slinfold, Sussex.
ElizabethHerts
26-11-16, 13:21
I haven't found so many ancestors for OH, but some of his lines go back quite far.
7 13x-great-grandparents
17 12x-great-grandparents
17 11x-great-grandparents
19 10x-great-grandparents
18 9x-great-grandparents
25 8x-great-grandparents
31 7x-great-grandparents
A lot of my lines are quite spread out for date - men starting families in their 50s and 60s etc. It always surprises me when people ask for help with their 2xg-grandparents and they were born 100 years more recently than mine!
I've done quite well on my fathers side as he is Dutch and their records are very extensive, and mostly on-line.
26 13x-ggp
35 12x-ggp
43 11x-ggp
58 10x-ggp
71 9x-ggp
70 8x-ggp
67 7x-ggp
86 6x-ggp
I can't see that any of my lines will every be extended now as I can't imagine what sort of record would help that I don't have already, so I don't tend to look at them very often.
ElizabethHerts
26-11-16, 17:13
I've done quite well on my fathers side as he is Dutch and their records are very extensive, and mostly on-line.
26 13x-ggp
35 12x-ggp
43 11x-ggp
58 10x-ggp
71 9x-ggp
70 8x-ggp
67 7x-ggp
86 6x-ggp
That's great, Crawfie.
I couldn't have got back as far as I have without wills.
Merry, you never know what new records might help. If the ROs extend digitisation you might discover more.
Olde Crone
26-11-16, 17:32
I have my 11 x ggf because that family farmed the same farm for over 350 years. If I similarly follow the land rather than thebmd trail, I can get the Holdens back to Domesday. Whether they are actually related to ME is another question - the illegitimacy in 1824 rather spoils the clean lines, lol.
As I have 5 out of 8 2,,x,ggps who were illegitimate I am somewhat hamstrung. Curiously the Scottish side contains very few illegitimacies and all that hampers me is a lack of records.
If I could get to Cheshire Archives for a good rummage, I'm sure there's more for my Gawsworth families but it s unlikely to happen now.
OC
As I have 5 out of 8 2,,x,ggps who were illegitimate I am somewhat hamstrung.
*is shocked* lol :D
So far, I've no illegitimate ancestors - rather boring!!
I've got a 10th gt grandfather - but I didn't do the research and I can't be sure that the Thomas Massinge listed is actually MY Thomas Massingham.
On most of my lines, I've got back to the 1700s, but once you are reliant on parish records it's harder, because there are so many families who intermarry and use the same names and the parish records rarely give useful information about who is who!
In one instance, I have 2 couples called Adam and Mary who both have eldest sons called Adam, baptised in the same village a year apart. I've finally worked out which one is my ancestor and which is my ancestor's cousin, but only because they lived long enough to be recorded on censuses with children and ancestor's daughter has same name as ancestor's mother, an unusual name.
I've many instances where I'm relying on a "best guess".
The other problem, going further back, is of course the difficulty in deciphering parish registers - some are beautifully clear, and could have been written yesterday, but others are scrawls and sometimes waterdamaged!
kiterunner
26-11-16, 21:52
The other problem, going further back, is of course the difficulty in deciphering parish registers - some are beautifully clear, and could have been written yesterday, but others are scrawls and sometimes waterdamaged!
Or nibbled by mice.
Very poorly compared to many of you, no doubt. However, my intent has never been to simply see how far I can go back, and that doesn't interest me. An uncle on my mother's side had managed to trace back to the 1600s, but I don't remember how much detail he was able to go into.
My interest in all of this has really been about putting faces and stories to names, and basically joining the dots together. Given that I don't even know who my paternal grandfather was, I suspect I am considered an outright failure by most genealogical standards. :D
My 13xgt grandfather died in 1547, William Manclarke "of Loddon". They had money and land so were comparatively easy to trace back using wills. They were all from Loddon or thereabouts.
Interestingly the Doomsday Book mentions a farm, Manclerk Toft, a few miles away, so it's likely that, given the time, money and several weeks in Norfolk RO, I could trace them back through more wills.
My Aldred line goes back to my 11x gt grandfather and I have quite a few 9x and 10x gt grandparents.
This is thanks to my father's family rarely moving more than a few miles away from where they were baptised. They were fairly easy to trace using parish records and wills.
My mother's family is a whole other thing. I have 11 generations of her Somerset Walfords and Palmers but mostly I'm stuck in Welsh patronymics in the 18th C.
ElizabethHerts
27-11-16, 07:33
Very poorly compared to many of you, no doubt. However, my intent has never been to simply see how far I can go back, and that doesn't interest me. An uncle on my mother's side had managed to trace back to the 1600s, but I don't remember how much detail he was able to go into.
My interest in all of this has really been about putting faces and stories to names, and basically joining the dots together. Given that I don't even know who my paternal grandfather was, I suspect I am considered an outright failure by most genealogical standards. :D
My intention has never been to race back through the centuries in search of an illustrious ancestor. I have tried to discover as much as possible about each individual, whatever their station in life. However, it has given me some satisfaction to take some of my forebears back through the centuries and to learn about their lives. Some of the earlier wills have given me glimpses of how they lived. I have also been able to find other information too for some of them. When I have been able to discover details about an early ancestor it has been very interesting and I have felt very lucky.
James, we all have our problems with our trees. I can't take the paternal line of one of my great-grandmothers back, and I have a similar problem for OH's tree. It's frustrating for you, I know.
Merry, you never know what new records might help. If the ROs extend digitisation you might discover more.
True. And I've just found James Eglington's burial which had eluded me before. I see there are loads of Eglington's in this new place, but I'm going to have to revisit how I got to the name Eglngton in the first place as my other problem is that I don't feel any relationship with these "new" names that only appear on my tree a long way back. I don't remember when I added the Eglington twig, and if you had asked me last week if it was a surname on my tree I would have said No! lol
Olde Crone
27-11-16, 07:52
James
My early ancestors are far more colourful than my staid 20th century ones and like Elizabeth, I feel privileged to find out these things. One of my biggest genealogical thrills was to be able to touch the signature on the will of my 11x,ggf, and thus briefly lay my hand where his had been.
The other point is that many of us on here have been researching our ancestors for decades and we have nowhere else to go except backwards!
OC
ElizabethHerts
27-11-16, 07:53
Merry, you might have to search using Eg*ton and other variants. I have found that for my Egletons in the Wootton Underwood area of Buckinghamshire had their name transcribed in various ways.
From the Bucks. will index:
Egelton
Eggleton
Egglynton
Eglentone
Egleton
Egletun
Eglinton
Eglintonne
Eglintone
Egltone
Eglynton
Eglyton
Eaglestone
Eagletone
Eaglinton
The spelling of my lot changes through the parish registers.
My earliest Egleton is Michael who was buried at Wotton Underwood in 1672 and left a will.
Eglinton
Merry, you might have to search using Eg*ton and other variants.
I have found a couple spelled with an A instead of an E and also two entries transcribed as Clark(e) lol which I'm sure I would never have spotted is someone else hadn't done a correction on Ancestry!
Ancestry's insistence on you entering two characters at the start or end of a word before you can add wild cards is very irritating!
kiterunner
27-11-16, 09:43
Also any surname which begins with a vowel may also turn up with an "H" before it, so don't forget to try Heglinton, etc.
ElizabethHerts
27-11-16, 09:46
Also any surname which begins with a vowel may also turn up with an "H" before it, so don't forget to try Heglinton, etc.
Kate, I discovered this when my Armsby/Armseby ancestors became Harmsbie, which I wasn't expecting.
The ones who had that happen in my tree had all moved to East London!! :D
One of the other factors is of course names. Welsh names are a nightmare (ex's tree has half the surnames in my tree as they use patronymics - and just as in England, they favour names like John, William & Thomas and marry Marys, Annes and Janes. I get very excited if I come across a Blodwen or a Sage!)
It took me ages to track down my 3 x gt grandmother Kezia's baptism. She married as Seal but her baptism records the family as Saul. The village she spent most of her life in has Scales and Scarls too, just to muddy the waters.
So much depends on what one's ancestors did. My gt x 3 grandfather Robert Chowns was involved in a settlement dispute in 1819 and the documents told me much about his life and living standards., whereas my 2 times grandfather William Williams, is much more of a mystery - 5 different birth years and places on 5 different censuses and I haven't been able to find his death or burial!
kiterunner
28-11-16, 08:36
I have in my tree:
79 7xg-grandparents
66 8xg
47 9xg
26 10xg
21 11xg
11 12xg
7 13xg
7 14xg
5 15xg
1 16xg
2 17xg
2 18xg
1 19xg
but this includes some women whose maiden names I don't know, so I only have their given names. Obviously the top few generations there are all on one line.
It would seem I'm definitely not making enough effort!!
A lot of the places my research takes me don't have and surviving parish registers before about 1700 or a few years before so if there are no wills and no PRs I tend to think I can't do anything, but clearly this hasn't stopped a lot of people, so.... how do you do it?
I won't be back until this evening, so not ignoring. If you see my light on I'm probably on my phone which hates this website, so I won't be responding to anything! lol
kiterunner
28-11-16, 09:58
I got back to John de Bradbrugge by being lucky enough to find an online book which had details of various land transactions, which gave family relationships. I had been looking them up in the TNA Catalogue but it is difficult when you get so far back that the surname spellings vary wildly.
Olde Crone
28-11-16, 12:15
One of my most useful finds ever, was mention in the 1800s of a small field which was part of a dowry. The bundle of papers concerning this dowry went back in seamless detail to a marriage in 1232!
Another useful find, again concerning a modest field, went to Chancery and took over 70 years to resolve. There was much genealogical information in that, most of which I was able to prove because I knew who I was looking for and which of the myriad John Holdens were implicated.
One useful trick I learned early on was to look at the front and the back of parish registers for extra information, such as confirmations, excommunication s, Sunday school registers, gifts and benefices...all sorts of stuff which doesn't (or didn't) get transcribed.
OC
ElizabethHerts
28-11-16, 12:32
OC, now more PRs are available online, I often find the pages where odd details are written. Sometimes you find a copy of a will, sometimes donations from the parish to other places where an accident or calamity had happened. Also payments for various services are recorded. For one parish in Lincolnshire I found that my ancestors had been barred from the church as they were deemed to be non-conformists.
kiterunner
28-11-16, 22:18
Ancestry's insistence on you entering two characters at the start or end of a word before you can add wild cards is very irritating!
They don't any more.
That's strange, because I quite often forget or mistype and then get zero results for something where I would expect quite a lot (off the top of my head the last time that happened was some time last week), but I just did a random test and got results with only one initial letter. So, there are definitely still some restrictions on wild cards, but not that one! I will be on the lookout now!
Thanks Kate, I can not look again for my Eglingtons with more variety!
As my program doesn't add things up for you:
19 13th gen
13 14th gen
5 15th gen
2 16th gen
I can go further back on printed pedigrees, but these are my own efforts.
Typically, Henry Youle and his wife Katherine are my 16th gen, he making his will in 1598, but other branches go back further in fewer generations.
This, too, is purely Mum's side. Dad's side made a habit of descending on Portsmouth and dying in the 1840s, possessed of very common names :(
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