I remember my great great grandma when I was a little boy. At one time i lived with my grandmother, her mother, and her mother’s mother all at the same time.
The reason I ask, is because sometimes I have gotten that, polite silence of disbeleif from people when i tell them i knew my great great grandmother. They then say the women in my family must have children early or something, almost condescendingly (never had anyone say, the women in your family must live long, instead.)
Is there a way to find out what percentage of Americans have met their great great grandparents?
Well, one way to go at the issue is to see what’s the youngest such a person could be. I suppose 13 would be a low child-bearing age.
Let’s say you’re 3 and your mother is 16 (she had you at 13).
Her mother had her at 13 so your grandmother is 29.
Her mother had her at 13 so your great-grandmother is 42.
Her mother had her at 13 so your great-great-grandmother is 55.
That could surely happen with no strain but those gals got busy having babies. If any of them delayed by a few years that old gal’s going to get older. Before too many delays she will be old enough that as you get old enough to say you knew her well, she’ll be gone.
Is the math good?
I’m 68 and have a granddaughter old enough to have a kid. If she goes ahead and has one in a year or so and that kid (girl let’s say) has a kid when she’s 13, I’d be in my early 80’s. So my granddaughter’s granddaughter could know me before I’m out of here, but she’d need to get old enough to know who I was pretty quick.
It isn’t that common but it isn’t unheard of. There was a woman in my tiny home town that went a generation beyond that. She was related to a very significant portion of the town. It don’t know about percentages for everyone. I had a great-grandmother that was born in 1883 that I knew and I am only 37 which is slightly unusual.
"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. "
My grandmother died in 2007 at the age of 100. When she died, she left behind 19 great grandchildren. The oldest was 23 years old. While he didn’t have any children, he certainly was old enough that he could have. My family is very normal, aside from the longevity of my grandmother
So I don’t see that’s there’s any theoretical problem with knowing your great-great grandparent at all.
No idea how common it is but when my oldest niece was born, two of her great-great grandmothers were still alive. One was 85 and one was 84 when she was born.
That just averages out about 21 as the average age at each link in the chain (though three of the steps were under 20 when the next generation was born, my great-grandmother was the spinster in her late 20s) which isn’t all the remarkably young and 85 is not all that remarkably old.
So while it’s probably not common, I doubt it is remarkably rare.
My wife has a 5 generation picture as well. It was taken when she was a little girl. Her mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and great great grandmother are all in the picture.
My family currently has five generations alive, as well. My grandmother is currently somewhere in her 90s (92, I think), and one of my first cousins has two grandchildren of his own, making them my grandmother’s great-great-grandchildren. I think the younger of the two is only 2 or 3, not really old enough to be said to know Grandma, but the older one is about 5, and Grandma still has a few years left in her yet.
The next door neighbor where I grew up had school age g-g-grandchildren when he passed. He was 98 years old. I went to school with one of his younger great-granddaughters.
A couple of centuries back, though, people did start having their children a lot earlier and, although far less common, people could still live into their hundreds.
So, at a pinch, with an unbroken chain of mothers giving birth at 13 you could conceivably have a ten year old child knowing a 101 year old great great great great great grandmother.
I remember the old Guinness Book of Records I had as a kid having an entry on the most generations of one family alive at one time, but I don’t recall what the record actually was. Let me see if I can Google it…
Well, here’s an old SDMB thread on the subject. Post #15 mentions a photo which rings a bell, showing possibly seven generations (although it could have been six). I remember seeing it in the 1971 edition - I think I still have it at home, so I’ll look it up.
And here’s a story about a six-generation family in England, i.e. a great-great-great-grandmother.
Edit 2: Here you go:
The Census Bureau doesn’t collect statistics on multigeneration families in general, but it does ask about the number of generations living in the same household, he said. (The Reynolds generations don’t live in the same household.)
The 2000 Census recorded 269 five-generation families – out of 105 million – under one roof, Mather said.
Although it didn’t ask about six generations, he said, the five-generation data provide a rough idea of the rarity of six generations.
“It’s got to be a handful.”
Guinness World Records cites seven as the record for most living generations – by the family of Augusta Bunge of Wisconsin. She was 109 when her great-great-great-great grandson was born in 1989.
That can’t be the one I remember seeing in the 1971 book though!
Or at least, having their first child relatively young. You’d have the best chance of knowing your great-great-grandparent if you were the oldest child of an oldest child of an oldest… but that would only be a small fraction of all descendants.
This thread got me wondering whether there was any correlation (positive or negative) between age of first childbearing and longevity.
One of the posted links in this thread shows my family’s photo of six living generations. My great-grandmothers’ great-great-granddaughter was about 19 in this pic, and I think there were a number of other g-g-grandkids that would have remembered her.
That said, I think it’s still uncommon for people to have g-g-grandparents that they actually remember.
Mine was alive when I was born but my grandmother was estranged from her and we never met. My great grandmother lived until I was 13.
My kids are now old enough to have kids (they better not!) and I still have one grandparent alive. Dads side of the family are just stubborn enough to live past their 90s.
Of course I thought of this thread when I saw in today’s newspaper (the “Senior Lifestyles” section) a photo of five generations of women from the same family (well, the youngest, at around a year old, wasn’t technically a woman yet), along with a request for other people with five generations currently living to send in photos.
We have five generations currently alive, and while the end of the chain, my great-niece, is only a year old, my grandmother is 89 and very healthy, so it’s conceivable that she will remember her. Because my grandmother had 12 kids over 20 years, and my mother (#3) started early (at 19) and her youngest sister (#12) started late ( at 40), my great-niece has a first cousin *twice *removed who is only 2 years older than she. I think that’s fairly rare.
On the opposite side of this: my great-great-grandfather died 101 years before I was born. There was only one single grandparent alive when I was born, and she was 71.
For humans, probably a negative correlation. But it’d be damn near impossible to untangle all of the confounding variables. Broadly generalizing, people in comfortable affluent society with access to education and good medical care tend to delay reproduction, and people in hard-scrabble subsistence agriculture societies lack education and health care and reproduce early since kids are helpful around the farm.
From a broad evolutionary perspective, the correlation is negative. Species that reproduce fast also die fast, while those that delay reproduction live a long time. If you have a population of animals in the lab, you can select for early reproduction and the resulting population is short-lived, or if you select for delayed reproduction you get long-lived critters. The converse is also true; selecting for longevity will result in critters with corresponding changes to their reproductive timing.