Just sent this to some of my relatives. Thought I would share here too. I’ve been having fun lately researching family trees and such. I have a nice big chart and spreadsheet with hundreds of ancestors listed, which I will probably eventally post. But here is my latest update (with some slight edits for clarity). I made a nice exciting find today!
From: Me
Subject: New Deepest Relative
Date: April 30, 2006 08:02:18 GMT
To: Grandmother, Father, Mother, Brandy, Cynthia
Spent some more time today doing genealogical internet searches using a bunch of the information Grandmother sent me in December as a starting point. Before today the deepest chain I’d found was on my Mother’s side (15 generations deep), but I found a deeper one today on the other side. There are still some paths I haven’t yet researched, but as of now, this is the farthest back I have gotten…
(0) Samuel Antonio Minter (1971-) of Wisconsin son of
(1) William Maynard Minter (1942-) of District of Columbia son of
(2) David Ramseur Minter (1912-1991) of Arizona son of
(3) William Ramseur Minter (1873-1943) of South Carolina son of
(4) John Russell Minter (1833-1913) of [South Carolina?] son of
(5) William Carter Minter (1797-1871) of South Carolina son of
(6) Jane Gillham (1773-1834) of South Carolina daughter of
(7) Thomas Newton Gillham Jr (1749-1828) of Virginia son of
(8) Margaret Gay Campbell (1725-1776) of Virginia daughter of
(9) William Campbell (????-1754) of Ireland son of
(10) John Campbell (1674-1741) of Ireland son of
(11) Duncan Campbell (1645-????) of Ireland son of
(12) Andrew Campbell (1609-????) of Ireland son of
(13) Hugh Campbell (1579-????) of Ireland son of
(14) Patrick Campbell (1544-????) of Ireland son of
(15) Duncan Campbell (1504-????) of Scotland son of
(16) Dugal Campbell (1474-????) of Scotland
Dugal lived in Inverary, Argyll, Scotland and was born in the “Ancestry Home of the Clan Campbell” according to one source I found.
Anyway, that’s the longest chain I’ve got so far. Although there are a bunch of other interesting chains too on both sides of the family. And I still have yet to Google many of the names on my chart.
Plus, I still haven’t even cracked the info that was sent to me by Mom today on the ancestors going back from my mother’s father’s mother (Mary Evelyn VanTilbergh). But it is late, so that will have to wait for another day…
Oh no…
I decided to look for five more minutes, and I found Dugal’s father… verified it because the same source shows Duncan as on of his kids, and Patrick as one of his kids, and Hugh as one of his kids… Some of the years are a bit off from the ones I had before (by just a few years) but four generations of names matching up would be a pretty big coincidence. Just checking more generations, they are still matching. Hugh has a son Andrew… who has a son Duncan… who has a son John… who has a son William… who is reported to have married Sarah Gay, who is who I have him marrying from my earlier research. Definitely the same Dugal Campbell.
And I am checking so hard to be sure because this listing has not only Dugal’s father, but fathers upon fathers going back another 600 years or so… It will take me many hours to incorporate this information….
This is a huge 2 Megabyte text file listing all the descendants of Duncan, Lord of Mormaer (born around the year 950). Myself, Cynthia, Dad and Grandmother are all apparently descended from this guy. This file gets me the direct line from us all the way Back to Duncan.
Duncan was the father of Crinan of Dunkeld, who has a Wikipedia entry…
Also of course Crinan of Dunkeld was married to the daughter of King Malcom II of Scotland (and the children of Crinan we are descended from are her children)… so she is in our line too, and I am pretty sure I’ll probably be able to go back even further in that line…
Yup, with just a few clicks on Wikipedia I can go back 150 more years to this guy:
Born around 800 AD, later to become the first King of Scotland… and a direct verifiable ancestor.
Filling out the years between 800 and 1474 AD in my spreadsheet I’m using to track all this will have to wait until at least tomorrow… it will take me many hours. And it is very late. Time for bed.
Hmmm… I’ll Blog this first…
If you go back far enough I am sure you will find a common ancestor for everyone.
I am now trying to investigate the “weakest link” in that super long chain listed above. The Jane Gillham that is the father of William Minter is listed as having a birthday of April 21st 1773. The Jane Minter that is the daughter of Thomas Gillham Jr is listed as having a birthday of October 21st 1773. Since they were born the same year in the same state on the same day of the month with with same name… I am inclined to believe that they are the same person and someone just copied the birthday incorrectly at some point. But there is a chance they are two completely seperate people, in which case everything going back further in time than Jane would be invalid. That would suck.
That happened to me once researching my mom’s side of the family. Matched up name, birth year and even birth town. Chained back to a bunch of ancestors. Only to then discover that one of the links had died at age 3… before they had kids… so was not who I thought they were.
Initial google searches aren’t yeilding any more information. I emailed a couple of people (distant relatives) who have done lots of work on these trees. We’ll see if they have any more info.
Absent that, the only way to find out might be to go to South Carolina and dig through old birth, death and marriage records.
Pooh 2. The October one is Gillham and the April one is Gilham. This link is looking even weaker. But still possible. Drat.
Well… in most references. I have found at least one reference to the April Jane with the two L’s. But so far all the John Minter refrences give the April date, and all the references with October do not mention any information other than parents and a birthdate. Just need another piece of common information to tie the two together, but no luck so far.
Assuming 25 years per generation, and using the upper estimate of world population here with the doubling in size of each generation, you would expect that your family tree would have more members in it than the entire population of the world around 29 generations back from the present time, or about 1250 AD. Which is of course more recent than Kenneth I of Scotland who I have tentatively connected myself to above.
Of course, in reality, far before 29 generations back you’d start to see considerable overlap in the family tree, with the same people showing up in multiple branches… so you would actually have to go MUCH MUCH further back to get to the point where every human on the planet was actually in your family tree.
As a point of reference, Mitochondrial Eve who was a common ancestor of every human alive today, was alive approximately 150,000 years ago. Y Chromosomal Adam, also a common ancestor of all humans alive today was around about 75,000 years ago.
Of course, no matter how far back you went, you’d never actually get to the point where EVERY human alive was an ancestor, because of course, any humans who died without having children (or whose lines died out later) would not be your ancestor.
More interestingly though, the “Most Recent Common Ancestor“… the most recent person who is a common ancestor of every human on the planet, may well have lived during historical times… around the time of the Ancient Egyptians. However, if a few really isolated populations still exist it might push the date back by several thousand years.
Interesting stuff.