* Multiple Great Grandfather Designations

[BobWard]

I kind of stumbled onto an odd situation while exploring some of my ancient ancestral relationships through the "How Related" tool. When I pulled up Brian Thornhill, FH reported that he was both my 19th & 20th great grandfather. Thinking that there must have been some incorrect data entry, I isolated that portion of the family tree that includes Brian. It then became obvious as to what was going on.

Brian had 2 children who are both directly related to me through an intermarriage of his descendants a few generations later. However, the married descendants went through 4 generations from his son (Simon Thornhill) and 5 generations from his daughter (Elizabeth Thornhill).

A pedigree diagram is attached that shows this situation. FH is correctly reporting my multiple (19th & 20th) great grandfather relationship to Brian Thornhill when using the "How Related" tool.

However, when I tell FH to include my relationship in the pedigree diagram boxes, FH defaults to Brian being my 19th great grandfather, i.e., FH does not also state in the box that he is my 20th great grandfather through his daughter's lineage.

Why is the pedigree diagram not reporting that Brian is both my 19th & 20th great grandfather in the pedigree diagram boxes? Perhaps a software limitation?

Multiple Great Grandfather Designation-1.JPG (238.34 KiB) Viewed 5249 times

[LornaCraig]

Assuming you have added a line to your text scheme using the default Relationship to File Root item, the expression in the template will be =Relationship(FileRoot(),%INDI%,TEXT,1) This will display the first (closest) relationship. If you want to display a second relationship you can add another line and edit the expression in the second line by changing 1 to 2. So it will be =Relationship(FileRoot(),%INDI%,TEXT,2) .

Incidentally I notice that if you select the item Relationship to Chart Root (note: chart root, not file root) the template is blank! I assume this is a bug.

[BobWard]

Excellent tip, Lorna! Adding that second relationship to the File Root did the trick. Brian Thornhill (and his wife) now display in the pedigree diagram as both my 19th & 20th great grandparents.

Thanks for your help.
Bob

[rodit]

May I respectfully enquire as to how you manage to trace your family back 1000 Years?

Regards

[tatewise]

It is actually only about 700 years, but still impressive.

To discover more about functions such as =Relationship() use the FH Help > Search Help, enter Relationship function and List Topics. The first few topics are usually all relevant, and in this case the Relationship topic explains the function and that Parameter 4 is "A number indicating whether you want information about the closest relationship binding the 2 people, the 2nd closest relationship, the 3rd closest relationship, or whichever. Use a value of 1, here, to represent the closest relationship, 2 to represent the 2nd closest, and so on."

[Gowermick]

rodit,
It looks very much like he has struck a seam of 'knights' (see his image), which are well documented in the Herald's Visitations. If you are lucky enough to link into one of these 'gateway' ancestors, you'll find a lot of the hard work has been done for you.

I have such a link in my own tree (albeit a dodgy one, which I have yet to prove 100% myself), and could use it to go back to 1066 and William of Normandy and beyond (about 30 generations).
I live in hope that I can eventually prove this final link

[BobWard]

May I respectfully enquire as to how you manage to trace your family back 1000 Years?

Regards

I have been working on this for nearly 8 years, the past 5 years nearly full time ( I am retired).

In addition to mining the Ancestry.com database, I have been fortunate to find a multitude of old English books (including Herald's Visitations, as Gowermick noted), that have been digitized and published online (free). These key-word searchable books include a wealth of genealogy information. I have lost count of how many of these type of books that I have discovered, but they are numerous. I also find a lot of information on Wikipedia. I do create very detailed records by making jpeg images of all the pages in each E-book that document my family lineage, and, cross-reference everything to a specific source document so that there is no question as to where any of my data originated.

It is very impressive as to the number of historic publications that can be discovered by using the Google search box with a relative's name. It takes some time, but it is very satisfying to find, read, and assemble the pieces of the family tree. A lot of the old English books have also included fascinating stories on the lives of the nobility., including details on their participation in historic battles and feuds with their neighbors. I am continually amazed at how brutal Medieval times seem to have been with all the fighting that was constantly going on.

Yes, I was fortunate to make some good connections to ancestors who were knights, barons, etc. This really opened the floodgates of information, since most of the English & European nobility are fairly well documented. I was also fortunate to make a connection to English royalty on my wife's side, so that really opened the floodgates for her ancestors all over England and Europe. The earliest I was able to trace her lineage was to a Roman senator who lived around 350 AD.

Note to Gowermick: My wife's 29th great grandfather was William the Conqueror. If you have him in your database, you should be able to trace his lineage back to Rollo the Viking.

[rodit]

I was unaware of the Heralds Visitations - as many of my ancestors were weavers (Lancashire) or coal miners (Yorkshire), I guess that there would not be many in the Knightly ranks!
I have got back in some cases to the mid 1500's (11 x GGparents) thanks to the Lancs Online Parish pages, and a One Name Researcher. Also more and more info is being put onto FMP, which is helping with the Yorkshire line.