LOT MORE WORK TO DO

I love being organized!  Not that I am, but I constantly strive towards that goal.  Recently I discovered that I should have 512 7th great grandparents, so I decided to create a document to chart my progress towards finding all those elusive ancestors.

I created an Excel spreadsheet with my grandparents in the first column, then their parents in the 2nd column, and so forth.  The good news (after entering all the names that I knew) is that I do know the names of all my grandparents, great grandparents, and 2nd great grandparents.  Before too much applause, that is only 28 people.  Of course, when I get to my 3rd great grandparents, the number and percentage found goes down dramatically -- 17 of 32 3rd great grandparents, only 8 of 64 4th great grandparents, etc.

When I analyze it according to nationality of my ancestors, I find that I only have as far back as 4th great grandparents for my Irish ones, but that at least eclipses the Polish relatives, which I can only trace back to my 3rd great grandparents.  For some reason, my German ancestors rule the "research roost".  I can trace back my German roots to three 8th great grandparents, six 7th great grandparents and four each of the 5th and 6th great grandparents.

All this makes me think that I have a lot more work to do!