Does anyone know how I might calculate the “average” number of descendants between these two young 20-25 year old Americans? Any website that might help me? How I would phrase such a query into a search engine?
Seems to me that I would have to find some type of data on what the average offspring was per generation on the whole between then and now. My maternal grandparents (b. 1902 and 1912) both came from families of fifteen or so siblings, but by the time I came along in the 1960s this large of a number of children was unusual.
And geographic location and economic circumstances would probably also play a part in the equation, would it not? In other words, did we hillbillies breed faster and more often on average than did “damn Yankees for the last 220 years?”
Is this question even able to be resolved with any type of “factual” answer?
I’m not asking anyone to sit down with a calculator to do it for me, just looking for a nudge in the right direction to solve it for myself.
And, I would use my own family tree for reference, but it is spotty in places (but it does branch :D).
Many thanks,
Sir Rhosis
I don’t know about how many descendants each person would have, but please take into account the high rate of infant and child mortality. More couples than not would lose a child or two before adulthood. Of my four grandparents, only one did not lose any siblings as a child (and that one’s mother had several miscarriages).
Zev Steinhardt
zev,
Yes, true. After I had subitted the post, many other things occurred to me that would influence the number.
Most males from that era well into the early 20th century at least, upon being widowered, usually remarried fairly soon so that their children would have a mother, and usually seemed to marry much younger women (from what I have read, in the 18th and 19th century, particularly, marrying the 14-year-old daughter off to a 30 year old or older male was not totally unheard of and it meant one less mouth to feed, sad to say), thus producing another goodly number of children by this wife.
But it still seems that even with all the factors: infant mortality, death before producing offspring, remarriage, occasional impotence/infertility, etc., etc., that there might be an “average” to within a few hundred descendants.
Sir Rhosis