We are including a chart below that will show you the maximum amount of ancestors you have through 10 generations.

You have;

Makes you wonder, does it not?????

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For example let us say you are working on your male surname that may be Warren and you have proven that one of your ancestors was named Thomas Warren and you can prove through a PRIMARY source that he married a Mary Marshall and try as you may you can not locate the father of Thomas. You have hit a brick wall at this point.

An experienced genealogist will at this point try to locate the parents of his wife Mary Marshall as the Marshall line just may carry more information on your Warren line.

You will often find more information on Warren lineage within the Marshall sources than through Warren sources!!

In fact we have found more information about many male lines through the researching of grandmother histories than from the grandfather histories!!!!

It is extremely important to prove through PRIMARY sources each of your ancestor generations. This will open up many possible routes for additional researchers. NEVER just write off the grandmother lines. Any where along your ancestor quest that you can prove who the  wife of your ancestor was, you have at that point doubled the number of your ancestors.

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Posterity in the female line tends to grow in a more rapid ratio than in the male line. If a certain Thomas WARREN (again for example), has two sons and two daughters, all of whom marry and each have two sons and two daughters, and if the same average rule holds for later generations, with no cousin marriages taking place within the connection, then out of the 256 great, great grandchildren of Thomas WARREN, only 16 would be WARRENS. The other 249 great ,great, grandchildren would be Smiths, Whites, Johnsons etc. Yet all  of the 256 would each contain the same amount of Thomas WARREN blood.

Think about the fact that there are many other surnames directly related to our male lines ancestor than just our own.

Harold Oliver
Director
America's First Families

 Copyright 2001, 2002 by America's First Families-All rights reserved.