I have a couple ideas about what I want to do with this challenge. The first is a continuation of a project I started last year: finding as many descendants of one of my ancestors. I went back several generations to an ancestor that had 19 children (between two wives, and 1 illegitimate child). I am only on his 5th child, but have found so many descendants. I want to continue this project, so some of my posts might be about these newly found cousins.
Another idea I had was to work on my 'ancestor score'. I found an interesting table online that showed how many ancestors you should have for each generation, then a column for how many you have identified in your own family tree. Going back 10 generations you should have 1023 direct ancestors. I have found 222, which puts me at a 21.7% filled out family tree. I know all my ancestors back 6 generations, and most of them in the 7th, but I only know half of my 8th generation and I only know 12 of my ancestors 10 generations back (out of 512 possible). I want to fill out those generations further back, which I know is a difficult thing because of how old those records would be. Some of my weeks might be information on these missing ancestors.
The first week's prompt is "start". I'm going to start off with my 4x great-grandfather John Butler. He was born about 1799 in Ireland. When he was about 25 he married Margaret Dorn. They had 2 children before immigrating to the United States. They came through New York in July 1828. They spent a few years in the New York/New Jersey area before moving on the Ohio where they eventually settled for good.
Margaret died in 1841 leaving behind 6 children. Around 2 years later John married Elizabeth Hughes, who was also an Irish immigrant to Ohio. Elizabeth was about 25 years younger than John and they had 11 children together. Their youngest was not quite 3 when John died April 1870. As far as I have found Elizabeth never remarried.
In researching John Butler I thought this was all of his family, but then I came across his will. In it I found out that he had an illegitimate child named William Eller, whom he left some money to when he died. I still don't know who the mother is, or exactly where in the age-order pf children he fits. One more thing to add to my research plans.
