June’s Theme and Week 23: So Many Descendants (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – 2023 Version)

The theme for Week 23 is "So Many Descendants." Sometimes when we're researching, we'll come across a set of ancestors who seem to have a gazillion descendants. Who is that in your family tree? Click here to check out all of the themes for 2023.

What I love the best about the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, is the fact it makes me look at my family tree with a new set of eyes. 

I decided to look at my DNA matches and which ancestor(s) seem to have the most descendants who have tested. I decided to look at AncestryDNA and use ThruLines. Now with my disclaimer: You get ThruLines when ancestors from your tree are also in a match’s tree. However, Ancestry will look at other peoples’ trees and build out your matches tree to find common ancestors. Therefore, your match must have a tree attached to their DNA results. Then common ancestors need to match, you might not get a match because they have a different birth, death, or marriage date for an ancestor. Perhaps you use the birth name of an ancestor and your DNA match uses a nickname. Thus, ThruLines are just hints, and I have found lots correct and a few incorrect things. However, the better your tree is built out, the better the ThruLines matches become.

I have a couple, my 4th great-grandparents through my maternal grandmother’s line, Lorentz Hilts (1782-1850) and Margaretha Wartenbach (1785-1850) which have 60 DNA matches. The Hilts/Hiltz line is quite huge. The immigrant ancestor, my 7th great-grandparents Christofel HÜLS and Eva Catherine Engel came to America in 1710. They have at least 10 children. They were the second group of Germans that England invited to populate the new World. However, the lineage between Lorentz and Christofel is not totally proven. It was given to me by a relative, however, I can’t absolutely prove each generation. At least to my satisfaction. 

ThruLines shows 6 descendants for the couple, I only have four of the 6 children. My ancestor has 20 matches, the next child has one that I need to evaluate, the third child has 17, the fourth has 15, the fifth has 5 and the last child has one that I need to evaluate. This branch of the family has a lot of descendants and with repeat names, children sometimes get attached to the wrong parents. This is why I need to evaluate James and Elizabeth. Also, even though it states that Susan needs to be evaluated, I already have Susan in my tree, so perhaps there is more to evaluate. 

I have a custom fact in my Family Tree Maker program for tracking my DNA matches. I noticed I only have 8 DNA matches documented. These are people that I can prove their line down from Lorentz and Margaretha. Therefore, I see another project in my future on verifying the DNA matches for this line. 

I decided to see how many descendants I have for Christofel and his wife Eva and when I export that branch of the family, I get 5362 people. This does include spouses of the descendants, still this is quite a large branch of the family.

If I check how big the export file would be if I choose Lorentz and Margaretha, I get 891 people. This is quite a drop of people. It just shows how quickly a family expands with each generation back we take our trees. 

Thus, if the set of your ancestors seem to have a gazillion descendants, is it because they are your 7th great-grandparents or more? 

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!

Week 34: Timeline (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks)

Amy Johnson Crow’s Week 34's theme is "Timeline." Timelines are a great research tool. What discovery have you made after putting together an ancestor's timeline? Have you thought about how everyday life changed for an ancestor during his or her life? Click here to check out all of the themes for 2022.

A Timeline should start with the birth date of your desired person and then go forward to events in their lives such as, employment, military service, marriage date, children’s births and deaths and then their own death.

My preferred genealogy software program, Family Tree Maker 2019 has a timeline report. If I select Publish, Person Reports there is Timeline Report. This report shows all the events for a single person. However, what can be confusing is that the report starts with the births of older siblings, if the report person wasn’t the first born in the family. However, it didn’t show the deaths of those older siblings because they died before my report person was born. Siblings that died after the person was born, was shown. However, only siblings that died before the report person’s death. 

Thus, the time line basically shows events surrounding the report person’s life. It will show births of siblings and spouses even if they occurred before the report person’s birth.  However, it will not show deaths of siblings before their birth or deaths of siblings, parents, spouses, children after the report person’s death.

It will show their marriage, their siblings’ marriages, their siblings’ births and deaths, their children’s births and deaths, as long as it occurred during their lifetime. 

Another place that has facts for a person in chronological order is under the Person Tab. If you select the Facts view, the person’s individual facts will appear in date order. This is one of the reasons I created a “Census” fact. I can see at a glance if I found them in a census record during their lifetime. This view allows me to quickly see if I have other census records that I need to search for. Some people actually use the residence fact for recording census information. However, I like to reserve that fact for city directories, or for where they were living when one of their children were born. 

As Amy said in the introduction, “Timelines are a great research tool.” Timelines allow you to put your ancestor in chronological time and place to better understand his/her movements and connections to people and locations. Timelines reveal gaps in your research where more information about your ancestor is needed. They can help point you to where to look for vital records. If you have big gaps in the person’s timeline, you might want to search out more information to see what they were doing. Did they have additional children, did they move away and then come back? So, if you are struggling with a person, try creating a timeline to see what you are missing.

Just remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!