My Ancestor Score for 2016

Randy Seaver, in his Saturday Night Genealogy Fun column, invites us to create "Your Ancestor Score for 2016." You can read his column to see how others have inspired him to create a chart determining, by generation, how far along he he is in his genealogy research. 

Since this is just a count of direct ancestors, it's not really an accurate picture of how complete my research is, but it is one way to measure progress.

I use The Master Genealogist (TMG), even though it's no longer supported, as I am still trying to determine which family history database I will use in its place. Using Charting Companion to read the TMG database, I created an ancestor fan chart shown at left.

It's too small to read, but I am in the bottom center of the chart and the chart fans out with each row being a new generation. This chart shows eight generations. It's fairly easy to see, even without being able to read any of the names, that I am doing well for the first 6 generations (including myself). I am missing 25% of the 7th generation and over 60% of the 8th generation. 

I used this chart to collect the majority of the data needed for my "Ancestor Score for 2016." I added a couple more generations to the chart to determine the rest but I don't keep that chart as it the printing is so small it's not usable.

From that chart I created a table similar to one that Randy suggested in his column. Mine has additional columns to show results by generation and by combined totals. This method was used in Blaine Bettinger's column. Here are my results:

The results show in the bottom row (green center column) that my ancestor score for 11 generations, up to my 8th great-grandparents, is 275. That's only 13.4% of my ancestors identified to that point. My 10 generation score is better, but still only 245 or 23.9%.

If I look at just 7 generations, up to my 4th great-grandparents, I'm at 87% and I am missing only 16 ancestors from that generation. I have a lot of work to do in those early generations to try to uncover more of my ancestors and their stories.

This year, I am still in the educational mode and am really trying to build my skills in several different areas of genealogy. So I won't be doing quite as much research. However, I plan to be able to devote a lot more time to research in the not too distant future. Perhaps my numbers in 2017 or 2018 will show some improvement.

Thanks, Randy Seaver, it was a fun exercise even if it does make my task look a little daunting.