With the beginning of each new year, I take a look at the ancestor count statistics to gauge how many new direct ancestors have been identified during the preceding year.
I’ve made some real progress in identifying some 1600s families in colonial New England back to old England in my family tree, but not many new names have been added to the total count.
I’ve also had good success tracing some of husband Dave’s lines back into the 1700s, which is a daunting task because most of his lines migrated westward out of the South, aka land of burned county records! If county records are gone, it’s a good bet that someone in his family lived there at some point!
Linda’s 2019 Ancestor Count
Dave’s 2019 Ancestor Count
However, even taking into consideration the fact that most of us have double descents from some ancestors, having identified 841 of my direct line and ONLY 295 of Dave’s ancestors out of a possible 32,767 means I have a LOT of work to do.
Great idea, Linda! I am going to create my own genealogical spreadsheets, analyzing the percentage of ancestors identified. Thanks for the inspiration!
Linda – thanks for the idea it helped me frame up a few research plans for the year. I did refer to your post in my blog as the reference for the “Ancestor Count”, I hope that is OK.