I was just at the second birthday party for my god-daughter’s son. This boy and his cousins have two living great-grandparents.
It got me to thinking about the greatest possible “generation gap” (i.e. the largest number of generations separating two related living individuals) that might exist within a family, and what the actual record might be.
If we assume that a 13-year-old can start a new generation (we’re not discussing the propriety or wisdom of this, you understand, just the physical possibilities) and the limit of human life as about 120 or so, then it would seem theoretically possible for a baby to have a living great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent, a gap of nine generations:
0 child
13 parent
26 grandparent
39 great grandparent
52 great great grandparent
65 great great great grandparent
78 great great great great grandparent
91 great great great great great grandparent
104 great great great great great great grandparent
117 great great great great great great great grandparent
Of course, this requires two rather contradictory circumstances: many generations having children extremely early in life, and an elder living to extreme old age. Before the last few centuries, the former was probably quite common, but the latter was quite rare. Today, the opposite is the case.
I did some googling, but couldn’t think of any really good key words to use to track down what I’m looking for, and didn’t find any answers to my question. But I figured my fellow dopers would have some ideas.
So does anyone know what the record is for largest documented number of generations between two living individuals?
Well, every so often you see those “Five generations” pictures in the paper, so the answer is at least five. I’d be willing to wager that six has happened.
My hometown has about 1300 people and I knew the following woman and even many members of her family before she died. This isn’t a record but it is uncommon and a record for the most generations that I have known.
"The celebration of the life of Mrs. Barbara E. Liles Galloway was held Friday, February 25, 2005 at 2:00 p.m. at Rose Neath Chapel in Logansport. She was a 100.
She is survived by 30 grandchildren, 72 great grandchildren, 54 great great grandchildren and 20 great great-great grandchildren. "
That makes 176 people alive concurrently through the generations.
I appreciate your answer Shagnasty, but I want to be clear that the number I’m looking for is the count of generations (i.e., how many “greats”), not the number of people.
But from the personal experience of one poster we’re already up to five generations in just two posts. Let’s keep going.
Oh, and the matriarch in question claims to be only 79 years old hence a future seventh generation for this family, each with an extant member, is more than possible.
That said, I’d be willing to wager that seven has happened.
Psst, Shagnasty’s reference was a six. The obit neglected to mention Mrs. Barbara Galloway’s children. Five’s even easier; my grandmother has two living great-great-grandchildren (and I think the youngest parenthood in that sequence was 19).
For the record, though… Back when my mom was a teacher, she would sometime assign a project to her third-graders asking them to interview the oldest person they know. Based on the number of 60-something great-great-grandparents those kids had, I think it’s safe to say that 14-year generations for many generations in a row is still a fairly common occurance. So there are almost certainly cases where a total of ten generations (counting the ancestor) have been born before the 120th anniversary of the ancestor’s birth, as in the OP’s hypothetical. Here, the problem we run into is that very, very few people ever reach 120. But a fair number top 100, and quite a few get into their 90s, so I’d say that 8 generations somewhere is almost certain, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the record were 9.
Pssst, not the way I was counting. Although Shagnasty’s cite provided an example of six living generations, but I was counting the gaps, with the youngest generation as level 0. I admit it might have been slightly confusing. But thanks for your observations.
I’m still interested if anyone knows how we could find documented examples. Surely someone doing genealogy research must have come across cases. Does anyone know if there online sources that might even offer an automated way to search?
I just don’t know the terminology to use for the search.
I believe that there are examples of six generations living simultaneously. It’s unlikely that there have ever been examples of seven generations living simultaneously. If the average generation gap was as low as 16 years, the oldest person would have to live to be 96. Societies in which people live that long tend not to have people marrying early.
There was a case in Spanish TV a couple years back of a family following that progression of “first baby at 13-15” - the oldest woman was in her 90’s and the pregnant oldest daughter, 13 (she would be 14 when the baby was born).
They remarked that it’s always the first daughter; later daughters apparently wise up having their niece at home.
Yes, there are at least two cited in posts above yours.
Yes, I said all that in the OP.
Here’s where we disagree. It seems to me that in the history of humanity, seven is certain to have happened, and eight or nine are far from impossible, considering the billions of families that have lived. I suspect an eight or nine gap may have been reliably documented somewhere, sometime within the last two centuries.
BTW, for my purposes, it doesn’t matter if members of the intervening generations have died. I’m only interested in the distance between the youngest and oldest living relatives. As long as baby and great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma are still alive, I don’t care if great-great-great grandpa died last year.
So it’s not number of generations alive simultaneously, it’s the gap.
I could swear that there was a picture in an old copy of the Guinness Book of World Records I used to have that showed seven generations of a single family seated together. But, I can’t find any online copies, and it doesn’t show up on the Guinness records page, either. It may be in the current print edition of the book. Anyone?
Certainly not my family. One of my great-grandfathers was a Civil War vet and homesteaded a Kansas farm around 1880. That’s only four generations including me.
Excuse me, what I meant to say was that societies in which people live that long tend not to have mothers having babies that young.
The Guinness Book of World Records 2007 says that the youngest great-great-great-grandmother was 88 years, 50 days old. That would mean (if the intermediate generations were alive) that six generations would be alive in that case.
If you accept the Old Testament as evidence, when Adam died at the ripe old age of 903 there were 9 generations of living descendants. The 9th generation was Methusaleh, who lived to be even older, and was Noah’s grandfather.
And please don’t jump all over me for citing the Bible in GQ. I know a lot of people don’t accept it, but it is a possible data point.
Although Shagnasty’s cite provided an example of six living generations, but I was counting the gaps, with the youngest generation as level 0. I admit it might have been slightly confusing. But thanks for your observations.