I call it generation jumping but I don’t know what other people call it. It is basically a degrees of separation game like the famous Kevin Bacon one but for history. The goal is to go back as far as you can based on personal relationships to get first, second, or third hand accounts of history.
I have been doing genealogy research for a few years and have gone back really far but I was missing a large part of my mother’s side of the family. My grandfather (her father) is still alive at 86 and in perfect mental health so I asked him about it. He gave me some information on his side of the family and it turns out that his grandfather was one of the very last Civil War veterans alive (1849 - 1949) and Life magazine covered him in a May 30, 1949 shoot as among the last of the last. My grandfather was born in 1925 and knew him well so I have a really close degree of separation with a Civil War soldier and still get to hear second hand accounts. That is pretty unusual I think for someone in 2010. If I wanted to take that one step further, I could probably go into into the 1700’s but I don’t know any family stories going back that far on that side.
I think overlapping generation relationships are pretty cool especially now that technology and times move so quickly.
What are yours?