The Trees

From Many One

It's a funny thing, how thousands and thousands of lives have come before each one of our own lives, all of them distilling into our own. Going from the present into the past, from father to grandfather and up we can go back generation after generation; but when five or more generations back, trying to come to the present through the many children in each generation, if you don't recall your ancestors' names, it's near impossible making your way back to your spot on the family tree. It makes grasping a gestalt of one's family history slippery as a fish out of water.

Parents

Let me show you. Each grouping is a generation of parents.

2: Anora: from Peter Sutherland and Carol Trinchieri.

4: Carol: from Alfredo Trinchieri and Cathleen Reeder
    Peter: from Arthur Sutherland Jr. and Margaret Suzanne Adams

8: Cathleen: from Dr. Dennis Franklin Reeder and Minnie Sargent
    Alfredo: Col. Felice Trinchieri and Maria Pia Falzoni
    Arthur Jr.: from Arthur Sutherland and Eleanor Reed
    Suzanne: from Herbert Henry Adams and Ida Kingsbury

16: Minnie: from Napolean Bonaparte Sargent and Lucinda Storey
      Dennis: William Reeder and Diana Park
      Felice: (see names on a gravestone photo)
      Maria:  (not yet discovered)
      Arthur: from Reverend Andrew Sutherland and Mary McLean
      Eleanor: from Frederick Reed and Honora Egan
      Herbert: from Gen. Henry Martyn Adams and Fannie Louisa McGuire
      Ida: from John Henry Kingsbury and Emily Haight Graves

In the first generation back there are two; in the second, four; third, there are eight; and in the fourth there are sixteen.

And that's not even listing brothers and sisters at each generation.

Compounding Numbers with Siblings

When we start to take into account siblings, aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews... For each sibling there may be a spouse or two, and zero to fifteen children, so very quickly, within even two generations it becomes difficult, even ungraspable.

Anora is one of four. She married twice and has one grown son. (1)
Paul married twice and has three step sons.
Susan married once.
Andrew married once and has two daughters. (2)

Peter was one of four. He married twice and had two daughters and two sons. (4)
David married twice and has a son and a daughter. (2)
Penny married once and has two sons and two daughters. (4)
Prudy did not marry. (0)

Carol was one of four. (She, see Peter's children.)
Paul married and has a son and a daughter. (2)
Franca married and has two sons. (2)
Camilla married. (0)

Multiple Marriages

Each marriage introduces two more parents who are part of two more families. It gets vast fast.