This year I spent an embarrassing amount of time building a family tree back to the first generation of New England settlers. Took me months. I wanted the full picture, not just the parental line but everyone in my gene pool. I have that now. I just wish I had done the math first. I would have known how many people we were talking about.
Its an exponential problem. The first immigrants to New England arrived four hundred years ago. That far back is eleven to thirteen generations, depending on the line. Two to the power of twelve is 4096. Four thousand from that generation alone!
I would still be working at it, except luckily only 80% of my ancestors arrived at that time. And, also lucky for me, there was some in-breeding. Not as much as you might expect, given the slim pickings in colonial farm towns, but thankfully enough to save hours of work. Go ahead and say what you like about kissing cousins. You won’t hear me complain.
In all I have over 5,000 names in my tree, including the names of maybe 2,500 men and women who boarded creaky boats in England and arrived before 1640. Some wicked moxie, they had. Historians estimate a total of around twenty thousand immigrants during that time, which would make more than 1 in 10 my direct ancestors. My grandparents grandparents grandparents grandparents grandparents grandparents.
They lived all over New England, from Maine to Connecticut. Farmers and fishermen and homemakers. Some stayed close to home for generations. Others moved around. I want to write about these people, but what I’ve realized is their story is the history of New England. If there was a notable event in those colonies, my ancestors were there somewhere. But somehow this familiar story of pilgrims, pioneers, and rebels takes on more meaning examined through their eyes.
I am not sure why. There is nothing particularly notable in these people. They were born and lived and died. They raised children — lots of them! — and fed them and protected them. If there was a battle to fight they showed up. When the war was over they went home. Those still alive, anyway.
Anyone from an old New England family could build a tree (Warning: Carpal tunnel!) and see a similar picture. But perhaps more to the point: they would see the same picture. Parts of it, anyway. That is what the math says, that anyone whose ancestors arrived in New England around that time is related to me in some way. According to some law of random probabilities, its a statistical certainty that we share at least one common ancestor. We probably share many.
So come and sit. Let me tell you about your ancestors. For reasons I cannot quite explain, it is a fascinating topic.
Wicked Moxie 