#145 THE SHAPE OF MY FAMILY TREE
I have been working on my genealogy for fifty years, and seriously since retirement in 2009. To date I have entered over 14,000 names (and always adding) into Family Tree Maker, my computer data base. I cast a wide net when attaching people to my tree--direct ancestors, very distant cousins, in-laws, stepfamilies. There are some branches which I have worked on in much greater depth than others. I enjoy researching the unique stories. The research never ends. While I have loosely traced some family roots back to medieval times, I know I need to firm up these sources and links. I am, however, more confident that I can better document the relatives from 1600 on so these are the stats I used for my analyses. I fed all my the data into my friend, ChatGPT, then posed many, many questions. (I must admit that I am not going to challenge Chat's numbers and am trusting the accuracy of Chat's counting.) As well, I have separated the data into our four family branches---my paternal Ho...
