When Barbara Schmidt posted My Ancestor Score – February 4, 2014 I clipped her ancestor score graphic to Evernote for future reference, set aside Valentine’s Day for this task, and posted my first My Ancestor Score as of Valentine’s Day 2014.
Happy Valentine’s Day and here is my score for 2015!
I added 26 new ancestors in the generations 8 through 11 during the year.
Generation 6 is still stuck at 30 of 32 ancestors. That brick wall is so frustrating and I wonder when I’ll ever be able to find the key to the door for the parents of
William A. W. DEMPSEY 1820-1867 of Fayette County, West Virginia.
And what does your Ancestor Score look like?
© 2015 Cathy Meder-Dempsey
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Opening Doors in Brick Walls 
26 newly discovered ancestors in one year is a great result. We find the most ancestors within the first years of our genea-career. I think. And you are doing genealogy for so many years now and are still so successful! I wish you will break through your brick wall at generation 6 one day. Good luck!
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I thought that I would know which ancestors were new but I confused the ones I found in 2013 when I visited Peter Daus’ library with the ones I added this year. I could use the search feature of my genealogy program to find out but I’m a bit lazy today. Thank you Karen and “Dein Wort in Gottes Ohr.”
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glad, I am still an inspiration ;)) and 26 new ancestors?? That is fantastic!! I am stuck, but I hope that I can find some hints I overlooked so far during my “Sorting my stuff” project, I have going on right now 🙂
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I’ve been seeing other scores popping up on different blogs and have been waiting for Valentine’s Day to post mine but didn’t do the math until yesterday. They might only be names and dates for now it is a start.
And maybe you will also inspire me to get my stuff sorted! 🙂
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Cathy, this is pretty neat. I’m going to do this, too. But what am I doing wrong with my math? Why is the change in possible ancestors on your chart between the 12th & 13th generations 2048 to 8096 when I think it should be 2048 to 4096?
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Oh goodness Elizabeth it sounds like you caught a mistake. I’ll have to check that. It will definitely change the %. Thanks for catching it.
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You may have done much better than you thought! 🙂
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Thanks again Elizabeth. I got both 2014 and 2015 fixed.
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I calculated mine as of now. It’s 134, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I suppose if I lived in Europe like you do… 🙂
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It really does help to have ancestry in Europe. My 463 are not ALL well researched but at least I have the names and dates and may one day also find the documents.
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Interesting chart! Are you figuring this by hand or is there a program!
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Jeanne, I created an ancestor report with my genealogy software and then counted the ancestors in each generation and plugged in the numbers in excel. As you can see by the comment above by Elizabeth I messed up on the number of ancestors in generation 13 and this put the rest out of whack. I used a formula to figure out the percentages. I can send you the excel file if you want to try it out.
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This is really pretty interesting, Cathy. Not sure I want to tackle it; but it would help keep things in perspective.
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Donna, most people do only the first 8 or so generations. I went up to the 21st since I have one line that goes that far back. Not completely documented but I have the names as a guide when I get around to checking.
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