Geeking Out - Tree Analysis, evaluating, and 'What's Your Number?'

In 2016, there was a brief social media craze in the genealogy community around the question: "What's Your Number".

It was a lot of fun as I recall, and the origin point for finding some of my favourite online genealogy friends (though some have later proved to also be extended family).

Naturally, as I'm a human researcher, and given to bouts of being human, my notes from the first round of taking part in this exist only in the hard drive of a dead computer that's living in our spare room, as dead computers are wont to between death, and that point where you skin your shins tripping over it enough to admit defeat and let go of whatever was on there 'now that all these years have passed' with as much grace as you can muster, so unfortunately, I don't have my original notes anymore to make for a handy comparison piece.

However, I did, very recently, identify my last remaining mysterious 3rd Great-Grandmother (GGM) Elizabeth Collicott, to fill out a whole generation, and that tripped the memory for me.
Meanwhile, for those among us who just love a good comparison series to read, I can highly recommend Julie Tarr's blog series, which starts here. She had a go in a first post published 17 Aug 2012, then revisited again in 2015 and 2017 ...and you'll get no spoilers from me.

In looking back, I was reminded of Christa Cowan's episode of 'The Barefoot Genealogist' from 15 Mar of 2016, which built on her Ancestry blogpost of the same name, from 16 Aug 2012.
At time of writing, this video has received 30,420 views (including my re-watching of it in preparation for this), 470 likes (no dislikes), & 66 comments.
This episode delves into all the how and why of this particular method of analysis of your research way better than I ever could, so though I'll touch on a few bits here, that's mostly where I learnt from (with a few additions), so I would still highly recommend giving it a watch when you have time.

In celebration of having filled out that 5th generation (I don't personally count my generation for purposes of this one), especially as last time I did this, there was a whole 1st Great-Grandparents (GGPs) branch who were essentially 'lost' to us, so the landscape is very different now (to say nothing of the advances in DNA for genealogy since), I thought I might revisit this analysis game and bring you along for the fun. Who knows, maybe between us, we might be able to chip a little at each others' brick walls slightly?

Disclaimer: Since I don't start with 'me' as a base for this type of analysis, my numbers will vary slightly from what you might see elsewhere. I'm still a big advocate for do whatever works for you in your research.

First of all, let's start with what we know:

In analysing my master tree I want to also incorporate genetic genealogy (more on my recent experiments with Leeds Method et al in the next while). To do that, I need to get typically to 9th cousins at the outside (so 8th GGPs)  which gives me a nice, tidy, 10 generations to play with. Your mileage may vary.

For those 10 generations, theoretically, I should have 2046 'slots' for an ancestor (to borrow verbage from various gaming systems), as follows:

Next, for the slightly daunting bit: How many have I collected so far?
One thing I do know, courtesy of GedMatch, is that so far as currently able to be read, my parents are genetically unrelated, so we're not expecting to find anything in the way of endogamy, so that's the full 2046 individuals I'm chasing. ...sounds about right for this family to be honest. Never do things by halves!

Another thing I know is going to come up, some of the women of these higher up generations, I only have a first name to go on so far, so I'm going to be strict with myself and only include relatives I know a first and last name for.
Well, here goes nothing...

Top Tip: Ancestry shows 5 gens comfortably, so the way I did my counting was, I made a list of all 32 of my 2GGPs (working on the basis of 'an ounce of preparation...'), and made each of them the person whose ancestors were showing, and then for the few who had someone in that last generation, I just used one unfold of the wee arrows by turns.

Okay, so overall, pleasantly surprised. At least something into double figures at every level.
I was expecting the odd one, as I have one line leading from each parent that goes ALL the way back into oral history*. I had no idea that I had quite so much of those upper generations filled out though. Especially the 4GGPs. To have nearly 3/4 of those slots full is fantastic!

However, there's that sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop, so let's look into it further.

To make it easier to manage, I went back and split the table into my maternal and paternal sides, and colour coded it:

The first thing that's quite interesting, is how close it is. It's really close at first: 25 found Mum's side, for 21 Dad's side for 4GGPs, and thereafter it falls away with Dad's side trailing.

Part of that is that for a range of reasons, in the last couple of generations, there hasn't been an abundance of contact, to the point where, until recently, there were a couple of lines that were looking like they might have been 'lost'.
On the plus side though, some of Dad's lines have been extensively researched by a team of family genealogists, headed by the epic cousin Russell in Indiana. Other lines though, there's some interesting situations, and in some cases, records are somewhat thin on the ground. Still, we persist. 

The most recently found 3GGM, Elizabeth Collicott, is on Dad's side too, and part of me is leaning towards that 'shiny object syndrome' of having a nice, new (to me) relative to get to know.

Mum's side, it's interesting. Mum's family have always been extremely close, and it's only in the last generation or so that the family has really started to spread out to any great degree. The stories are still told and there are more photos, which definitely helps to keep them 'alive' somehow. That side are also keen users of a variety of communications methods to keep up with each other that bit more regularly.

So, there's this odd equilibrium: Dad's side are heavier (with a couple of exceptions) on genealogical record, but light on the DNA side of things (other than me, only one relative that side within the immediate family has chosen to test so far).

On Mum's side, there are more situations where the genealogical records are more spotty, but we do have the benefit of not only more relatives who have chosen to test, but also, the identical twin factor is very close in to the people who are testing, which can be both a blessing and a curse. The good thing however is, of all the female born offspring of the twins, we have tests for a daughter of each twin and a grand-daughter of each twin, so we cover three out of 4 of the twins' downlines currently.

Interestingly enough, most of our cousin matches are 3rd cousins (4GGPs) or further though, so it's probably worth trying to plug those 7 missing 4GGPs, so as to be able to narrow it down, though in the meantime, given the twin factor, I'm hoping some recent experiments in adapting the Leeds Method may pay off soon (more on that at some stage in the coming months).

* I include it. I'm a huge history nerd and my main job deals in telling stories. I like it. I'm annotating it as far as I can at every turn. I am comfortable, pre-mass literacy, to include oral only sources as tertiary sources. If that doesn't work for you, that doesn't work for you. We're all going to come at this slightly differently, even within the lingua franca.

6 Years Blog Anniversary, Looking back and Forward, Back to Early Medieval Europe & Forward Planning

 

Daffs on our mantlepiece this evening

Well, I'm customarily late in writing this. In fact, our first daffodils of this year are in flower before I got this out. Ah well, I've always loved tradition...

The last while has been a lot, hasn't it?

I confess, 2021 has not been my busiest year for genealogy. I had a couple of commissions in the background, and I'm still pursuing my German descendancy project, which is technically, I think, as finished as it's going to be, but there are just a couple of 'not found' individuals that I'm still pursuing in the hopes I can fill out the set for my lovely client.

At home though, on our side, things have been fairly quiet. Mostly because keeping working, and a family together in body and mind under C-19 while cocooning throughout (this is day 700 cocooning for our family - and we still managed to catch 'Omicron' while we've been here. I became symptomatic on Boxing Day and have been poorly ever since. Spouse felt a bit tired and 'under the weather' for a few days, but is doing much better since) is... well, a lot of things from the relatives who lived 100 years ago is beginning to make more and more sense.

In other 'at-home' and social/family history news, my spouse discovered in April last year that it turns out that he/she (his/her preferred pronoun) is non-binary. This has given us some fairly unique things to think about in the context of our family history and genealogy, not least, we had to work out how to express his/her life in a way that online and computer based genealogy 'understands'.
we also welcomed two new members to the family this year, with the babies of a first cousin, and our nibling (is anyone else always tempted to write 'nibbling' too? ...or is that just me?).

I did also very nearly finish my 4 gen study - twice! First time round, our computer died and took my project with it. When I recreated it, I found that, in my sleepy, late nights approach (when will I learn?!), I did, recreate the project, but completely forgot about the research log, so I'm currently about half way through just re-doing it over again, as guessing on the log feels like cheating, so I'm starting from scratch. I've also changed my focus person from my maternal Great-Grandmother, to my Grandmother (yes, I have been on this assignment so long, that a whole new generation is eligible). With any luck, I will have that finished pretty soon (famous last words) and then it's just that licensing exam to sit. Perhaps this year. If our country ever becomes more realistic and less eugenicist in its outlook, so that it becomes safe to go out.

In recent activity though, we found another genetic cousin through one of the various facebook genealogy & DNA groups. It's looking like he and I are very probably 6th cousins once removed, but that depends on us tying my Catherine (only ever Catherine in her docs so far, and I'm not 100% settled on her parents yet), to his 'Kate', who is similarly always 'Kate' everywhere that he's found. It seems like a sound logical progression, but our DNA holds us closer (around the 4th cousin range), so there is an interesting thing to investigate there, because on our side at least, there's a possible sideways, double-related thing going on in this area of the tree, so that also requires some closer investigation.

There was also the very cool finding of all 4 of my grandparents (for the first possible time) in the 1921 census, and more information on their families (especially one GGF's extremely cool job!).

As with other years, my enthusiasm is high again. What remains to be seen is how much time there will be for genealogy & family history this year among other work. I still would rather be a slow and steady genealogist for the most part, than rush, because I know where that gets me (and we're not one of those families who can dash something off and it just works. Some of us, me especially, are cursed when it comes to anything administrative).

26th January was my 4 year blogiversary. Since I didn't do my customary look forward and back recently, I figured it's best to look cumulatively across the whole lifetime of the blog and see what's still outstanding, plus I have a couple ideas of directions I want to take the research this year if time allows.

Previous & New Targets (Oldest to Newest):	2022 and beyond...
Update the paper tree when all the online ones are fixed	Yeah, that's probably a never-never task, though I did at least design a frame I could keep it in, so that we could wall mount it and still have access to make updates, so that might be somewhere in the next couple years' projects.
Sit Licensing Exam	Still working at that. Fingers crossed!
The 'Bad Billy' Book Solve the Spencer-side mystery NEW: I want to aim for at least one post a month this year, but it's a compassionate goal, so I'm totally claiming this one for January (because who's to say we're not part Timelord anyhow?!). Push forward with the DNA side of things. Try and place some more relatives.	That second draft didn't work out either. I did, with the help of a lovely researcher in Australia, and a very helpful gentleman at 'Trove', plug one or two holes in the story, but really, what's needed at this point is: I either need to come up with an Edition 1 and just get it done, or I need to find some (legitimate!) way to access the Windsor Castle Archive and look over a particular document that exists only there. It feels like one of these is more achievable than the other, but in all honesty, I'm not sure which just now. Still no nearer on that one. Hopefully something gives somewhere soon. I've learnt that despite the best of intentions, I'm not great at follow through on the consistent blog challenges (not least because the platform shouts at me and makes threats at me periodically, and I don't have a clue how to placate it), so compassionate goals are going to have to be the order of business. That said, claiming this one, I have 1 out of 12, so that's 8.3% success, right? ...Ever an optimist! I also have a few ideas up my sleeve for future posts, but if anyone has some fabulous inspiration they want to share (with credit of course), I'd love to hear them! I've learnt over the lifetime of the blog so far, that coming up with something that would be interesting to anyone outside of our family (and in all honesty, sometimes only the fellow genealogy-nut relations) is the biggest challenge. I am currently working on a non-traditional version of the Leeds method to try to crack some of spouse's DNA matches, so perhaps there's a post in that, if it won't bore the pants off people? I currently have all 32 3rd-GGPs identified, so locating relatives up to 4th cousins is doable, and in most cases, there's a fair chance at placing a 5th cousin (though of course, our twin factor on certain lines does create some interesting effects). Out of 64 4th-GGPs though, I currently only have a firm handle on 40, plus 2 halves, so that makes the 6th cousin range a little more spotty, which is a shame when most of my matches coming up are smack-dab in that range. If we're talking 'faerie wand' type year, I'd love to firm up and figure out who the other 22 and 2 halves are.

So, that's about the shape of it at the moment.
How about you? How's your new calendar shaping up for this year's genealogy adventures?
x

Tribute to Nancy

 This afternoon, coincidentally around the same time as Sean Connery, our Aunty Nancy died.

Nancy (née Laity), was born at the start of 1935, the youngest child of three born to Lily May Jacobs and William Henry Laity.

By 1940 William had deserted Anna and the children. Eventually he would have a second family with another daughter and three more sons, including my Dad.

Nancy and her sister Stella, were avid lovers of family history, genealogy, and Cornish culture. Nancy was, in fact, my first real life example that genealogy & family history are not only things that it is okay to like, but also that it was the kind of thing that real people could engage with.

Nancy once told me that she early on in her marriage to Jim she had started looking for the half siblings. The search proved fruitful and both Stella and Nancy were writing regularly with my Dad by the mid 90s.

We all attended the 'Great Laity Gathering' family reunion in Marazion in the summer of '97, arriving a day or so early in order to meet Stella, Noah, Nancy, Jim & Alison first.

Nancy & Stella the first day we met
Taken outside Stella's house in St. Blazey.

'Great Laity Gathering 1997'
Trip to St. Michael's Mount to see the
portrait of Dolly Pentreath
RH edge: Dad (in black), Sis (in white), Mum (in orange)
I took the photo. Walking between Stella & Nancy.

That trip was the one that consolidated that there would always be a family history & genealogy journey at some point during my life. Stella made a proper Cornish tea that first afternoon and from then, throughout the rest of her life until she entered nursing care, Nancy gave me first potted genealogy basics lessons, what 'vitals' are, how to record and read trees, primary documents, secondary sources and photographs. She even taught me about the fine art of graveyard hunting for dead relatives. Later she would go on to share more research tips & first her discoveries, then later, she shared mine with equal excitement. She was so encouraging from day one. I remember she said to me that first day, if I got good, perhaps I could join the 'family genealogy team', co-ordinated by cousin Russell in the states. I said I'd love to join in and research with her & she joked that maybe after she passed, a slot might come up for me. I've lived half in terror of that happening ever since. Nevertheless, it was a really motivating joke. She was an exceptionally clever woman.

We stayed in touch and another proud day, was when my eldest son was tiny and we were able to get down to Newquay, she made him his first taste of Cornish pasty and on the same day, taught me the family pasty recipe. 

We stayed in touch across the years, mostly sharing family & genealogy news. 
The weekend before my Dad died we spoke on the 'phone and she was so warm, loving and supportive. 

Mum and I saw her last in June 2015, not long before she moved into nursing care. Shortly after, with the help of cousin Russell, we made a discovery about the family tree that allowed us to push back one generation by using the Land Grants of Henry VIII in Cornwall. This also allowed us to unify some of the branches higher up and tidy off some loose ends. I wrote to her about it, but I'm not sure she was able for that kind of information by that time. Still, it felt the right thing to do to keep her included. I never did write to her about the DNA side of things. Mainly because I think by that time, it would have been a bit beyond her. In a parallel world though, it would have been so cool to look together over our shared DNA & chase down the people and the stories.

I will most remember her as a massive source of love and support. She didn't care about the circumstances of how we came to be related, but that we were family.
Tonight I am strolling again through the Laity side of the family tree. Retracing her steps and seeing what there could be out there that's new.

Sleep tight Aunty Nancy. You are so loved. xxx

Product Review: 'The Beautiful Life of...' book by Four Bears Books (Not Sponsored)

NOTE: So that you know, I'm not being given anything to review this product, nor was I asked to review it. I'm just very impressed with it.

_____

Back along a couple of months I backed a project on Kickstarter because it looked pretty cool.

The concept was brilliant. Writer Juliette Eames and a small team at Four Bears Books had come up with a hard-back book that could be customised to make anyone's life into an heirloom accessible to anyone from the littlest family members upwards.

For my donation, we got to be one of the first families to receive a book. We chose to feature my Maternal Grandfather (who was my March Relative focus back in 2016) as of all the near relatives we could think of, he was the one relative who every living adult member of the immediate family was alive to know and we felt that was an important place to start. Over time I'd like to think that we could possibly collect a few more of these books focusing on other relatives too.


As is my traditional curse, some of the administrative side of it went wrong (if ever anything will have teething troubles, gremlins, or computer refusal, it's ALWAYS going to happen with me), so I ended up trading quite a few emails with Juliette herself and even, in the end, we even got to speak on the 'phone. I have to say, she's one of the most on-fire genealogy/family history people I've ever encountered and it's clear that her whole heart and soul is tied up in this product.

Our book arrived ever-so speedily today (I think about 3 weeks from standing once we got everything sorted out) and we are so impressed with it. It's a great quality book and beautifully presented.

Would you like to see a few pictures of what they created for us?

The Front Cover

Pages they made from family photos we contributed

The opening of the story

The part about his marriage to Grandma:

Should you happen to be on the lookout for a genealogy/family history based gift or even a baby welcome present, this would be a lovely option. We're really pleased with ours.