Genealogy and History Fan

Whether you have a small immediate family or a large one you may be surprised how many relatives you have. A chart by Sam Lower in the April 2007 Ensign Magazine shows us the startling numbers just coming from our great-great-grandparents.

We have sixteen g-g-grandparents. If each of those eight sets of g-g-grandparents had five children (most had more!) and so on down the line, we can expect to find 12,496 people. Yes that’s right - 12,496! So in just five generations we have an astounding number of family members. You are a part of something big! Genealogy is fun and exciting and you will never run out of relatives to discover!

While we are speaking of cousins: in the 19th century the term “cousin” could refer to any blood relative except a mother, father, brother or sister.  So Aunt Sarah may have been called cousin Sarah.  And of course close family friends were often called Aunt Jane or Uncle Joe.  Our ancestors did not want our research to be too easy!

“When a society or a civilization perishes, one condition can always be found.  They forgot where they came from.”                               Carl Sandburg  (1878 1967)