Close to Home: Five Generation Chart

Chart of Five Generation Ancestors, 2016 by Midge Frazel

Who are the People to "Go-Over"?

I started this project by defining the people I was to review, record and write about.  Here is this same chart I posted at Flickr in case you want to look at it more closely.

Just to make it easier on me, I gave each generation a number for my notebook. This is how I used to teach a course in beginner genealogy. I started with paper so that each person in the class learned the terminology and how to fill in a chart. I wanted them to see how much they knew and who to call and interview. Getting the "grandparent math" and finding out how many they had total. (2 parents, 4 grandparents, 16 great grandparents, etc. Most people could name a great grandparent or two and that was it. Of course, they wanted to know how far back I could go and how long that took. I told they that before they went out on this adventure, they had to stick "close to home" before packing their bags.

Last year, I worked on my paternal ancestors so this year I plan to review my maternal ancestors starting with my mother (#2). Yesterday, was the anniversary of her birth one hundred years ago. I spent a little while reviewing photographs stored in the back of my office closet. Since last summer, I have found my mother's high school yearbook and recorded the schools she attended. It is surprising that I had not done that before.

My maternal grandparents only had two children. When interviewing my maternal grandmother, I learned her first baby was stillborn. She carried that pregnancy to 5 months and then gave birth to a dead baby. My grandmother was in her late eighties when I learned this. My mother did not know that she could have been a middle child. 

After making this chart, I gave each person a number and typed them out grouping them by generation. I am lucky. I know the names of all thirty people, when they were born and when they died. For some I only have a year to work with and that is something I need to work on.

Ancestor #24, my 2nd great grandfather, Dudley Wheeler Stewart is a good example. I sent queries for his birth record to North Stonington, Stonington and Groton, CT with no results. I have compiled histories and genealogies with different dates. I need to make a list of them and where I found them and keep digging.