By The Numbers

 

    Everything in the world can be reduced to numbers. Our age is a number, our heights and weights are numbers. Your bank balance is a number. Our favorite sports teams have wins and losses recorded in numbers. There are statistics available on everything imaginable. We are warned by doctors if our blood pressure numbers are too high or blood iron level is too low. Genealogy is no different. 

    Researching our family history is more of an empirical exercise than an objective observation of what happened. It relies too much on older documents where mistakes in spelling, dates, and places can be wrong. Much of what we use is word of mouth evidence with no documents attached. That leads to making assumptions and speculation about who is related to whom. But numbers are important. 

    I have 1611 people on my family tree. The tree starts with my two children and traces their ancestry back through both parents and beyond. There are 211 years between the birth of the oldest person in my tree and my writing of this blogpost. The most popular surname in my tree is Pasternac/Pasternak with 112 people. Levin/Levine is next with 68 and Kaganovich is 3rd with 57. There are several other names that appear 20 to 50 times including Becker, Boxinbaum, and Cohen which is the Jewish Smith or Jones. And there are only one each of Smith and Jones in my tree. 

    The most common given name is Rachel with 16. John/Jack is second with 13 and Morris is third with 12. However Moshe appears 11 times and it is most commonly associated with Morris and if you combine them that is a whopping 23. My own name comes up only 6 times and my wife is the only Arlene in my tree. I must say, she is unique.

     Ancestry.com has a feature which will show on a map all of your 4th cousin or closer matches. It only shows people who have had their DNA tested with Ancestry and linked their data to the map. I have a smattering of matches all over the globe. I have over 3000 matches in the USA. The United Kingdom has me matched with 131 people throughout England, Scotland, and Wales. I don’t have any matches in Ireland but Arlene does. She also has a match in South Korea. There are a large number of matches in Australia for both of us. I have 54 and she has 28 but one of hers matches on a 3rd cousin level. My matches in Canada only amount to 11 but it is because none of my mother’s family has tested and therefore do not appear on the map. I know that the number is much higher than that. 

     

     DNA testing and matching is the numerical data driven component of genealogy. My DNA is posted on four sites. Centimorgans are the unit of measure and the important factors are total amount of shared DNA, the amount of segments, and the length of segments. The more of each between two people the closer they are related. I share 2534 centimorgans with my sister, Marian. That is about 50% of our DNA and that makes 100% sense. On one service I show 7 people with whom I share segments 50 cMs or higher. I don’t know who any of them are. I also show that 6 people and I share 14 segments over 23 pairs of chromosomes. I don’t know who any of them are either. 

     My two children each have 1 sibling (each other) and six first cousins. They have three blood related aunts and three uncles that have married those aunts and twelve grand aunts and uncles who are blood related along with their spouses. The next generation up of 2G aunts and uncles is 26 and there is an exponential explosion of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins. I won’t even attempt to count the once removed and twice removed cousins.

     I’ve been immensely enjoying my journey into my family’s past. It is especially gratifying to learn the stories of my ancestors and how they dealt with the trials and tribulations of life. Knowing what defined them helps me to understand what defines me and the people I call my family. All 1610 of them.