September 23, 2015

How Many Ancestors Are You Missing Per Generation?
Last Names of Nuevo Leon

How Many Ancestors Are You Missing Per Generation? Is a great question and the other day I was wondering as to how many ancestors there are per generation and how many of them were missing.

I made a quick list, nothing fancy as you can see. I quickly realized that had no idea as to how to figure out how many ancestors I was missing per generation.

I tried looking for a program that could tell me how many ancestors I have found per generation but could not find one.

The best thing was the 9 generation chart I printed a few weeks ago. From the chart I could easily see that I had all my ancestors up to generation 6 and then on the 7th I was missing four ancestors.

I counted 41 missing ancestors from the 8th generation. Then on the 9th I was missing 104. After that there is no easy way to count them. If you have any ideas please let me know.

On generation one I started with my self, then generation two my parents, generation three my great-grandparents and so on.

  • Gen 01: 1
  • Gen 02: 2
  • Gen 03: 4
  • Gen 04: 8
  • Gen 05: 16
  • Gen 06: 32
  • Gen 07: 64 – I am missing only 4 ancestors
  • Gen 08: 128 – I am missing 41 ancestors
  • Gen 09: 256 – I am missing 104 ancestors
  • Gen 10: 512
  • Gen 11: 1024
  • Gen 12: 2048
  • Gen 13: 4096
  • Gen 14: 8192
  • Gen 15: 16384
  • Gen 16: 32768
  • Gen 17: 65536
  • Gen 18: 131,072
  • Gen 19: 262,144
  • Gen 20: 524,288

On generation ten you are looking at your 7th Great grandparents and on generation 20 you are looking at your 17th great-grandparents. If you count everyone including your self you have a total of 1,048,575 persons in your family tree. Don’t forget that these numbers are not unique ancestors. Many of them will overlap. For example by Generation 9 some of my ancestors repeat themselves several times.

Number of Ancestors in a Given Generation

Here is a link to a very interesting post that Eleanor Salas Barajas shared on our Facebook Group: Number of Ancestors in a Given Generation make sure to bookmark it or print it for future reference.

I as of today I have a few lines going back 20 generations and only have found about 900 ancestors in total. In my own estimates, I think I have enough research left for a few lifetimes.

How about you? How Many Ancestors Are You Missing Per Generation?

Do you know how many ancestors you are missing per generation? Let me know in the comments.

Other Great Posts

Using and Finding Books to Find Your Mexican Ancestors and Expand your Family Tree

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About the author 

Moises Garza

I have doing my family genealogy since 1998. I am also the creator of this blog Mexican Genealogy, and my personal blog We Are Cousins. To always be up to date with both of these sites follow me on facebook. To contact me or book me for a presentation, buy my books, and or learn more about me visit my personal website at www.moisesgarza.com.

Books to Help You Grow Your Family Tree

Benavides-Last-Names-of-Nuevo-Leon
Garza-Last-Names-of-Nuevo-Leon
Gonzalez-Last-Names-of-Nuevo-Leon
Villarreal Last Names of Nuevo leon

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