Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How Many Children/Grandchildren in your Matrilineal Line?

Carrie, over at “Under the Nut Tree Genealogy” participated in an older Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge today. This post, from January 18th of this year, is titled “How Many Children/Grandchildren in Your Matrilineal Line?” I thought I’d participate as I didn’t have a blog in January. Here’s the challenge:

1. 1. Consider your Matrilineal Line (mother’s mothers mother’s, etc.) families – the ones from your mother back through her mother all the way back to the first of that matrilineal line in your family group sheets or genealogy database. List the names of these mothers, and their lifespan years.
   2. Use your paper charts or genealogy software program to create a Descendants chart (dropline or graphical) that provide the children and their children (i.e., up to the grandchildren of each mother in the surname list).
   3. Count how many children they had (with all spouses), and the children of those children in your records and/or database. Add those numbers to the list. See my example below! [Note: Do not count the spouses of the children]
   4. What does this list of children and grandchildren tell you about these persons in your matrilineal line? Does this task indicate areas that you need to do more research to fill out families and find potential cousins?
   5. Tell us about it in your own blog post, or in a comment to this post, or in a comment on Facebook or Google+.

So, here goes!

My matrilineal line is (note: I’m not including spouses)

• • My mom (still living): 3 children, 2 grandchildren
  • My grandmother, Ethel Evelyn (Dickson) Kaechle (1915-2004): 7 children, 13 grandchildren
  • Martha Lenora “Nora” (Ward) Dickson (1885-1916): 5 children, 15 grandchildren
  • Sallie Harriett (Dickson) Ward (1860-1960): 9 children, 41 grandchildren
  • Lenora “Nora” J (Mays) Dickson (1823-1909): 9 children, 30 grandchildren