Henry IV of England is your 24th great grandfather.

Henry IV of England is my 17 great uncle. His father is my 17'th great grandfather, John of Gaunt.

Henry IV of England is my 18th and 19th great uncle

When talking of ancestors as distant as a 24th greatgreatgrandfather, we should use the right terms, I made my arithmetic and in the line 24, we have 16,777,216.00 great grandfathers. The phrase should be "One of your 24th great grandfathers. Henry IV is also one of my greatgrandfathers. On the other hand, in history we will find that very few families have a direct line of 24 greatgrandfathers with the same name in a row, Not even in the royal families you can find that example, and royalty will also be transmitted indirectly through motherhood. To meke this more interesting I believe that with our new knowledge of the human Genoma and the DNA properties, inherited mostly from our mothers, the concept of names should be revised and thus the way titles will be inherited, and of course other meterial issues....

Correction to the words"make" and "material"in my former intervention, new laptop new keyboard, old fingers......

That's a very interesting observation about the number of people who are our grandfathers Mr. Gomez... what formula is used to arrive at that number? FYI, .I am seeking 1 doccument next week in London that will prove my family decendency in a direct male line from me to Rhys ap Tudor 1256 and beyond to 30 AD or about 350 generations....That would be the Baptsimal Record for John Rice 1624 son of John Rice 1600 aka as PERROTT ap Rice son of Thomas son of John RICE II son of William, son of DAVID ap Rice son of Sir Rhys ap Thomas1449 of Bosworth field....Some have suggested I give up on that....Im not inclined to do so, would you? DCR 1948

Gustavo Ferrero Gómez

If you are referring to me
I just copied and pasted what the relationship path was on Geni stating that he was my 24th great grandfather. I wasn't real worried about correct terms.The reason I started this discussion was because it showed every father above him all the way to William the Conqueror in a line as my grandfathers. I just thought that was neat and decided to start a discussion about this.

Well, it is neat, and I was astounded that in 948 years there were that many grandfather's behind your name....I read 16,777,216 which what you posted, perhaps there is a decimal point in the wrong place, 16, 777 makes more sense but I was just wondering? LOL that's a lot of breeding in so short a time....DCR 1948

Number of Ancestors in a Given Generation

http://dgmweb.net/Ancillary/OnE/NumberAncestors.html

I never copy and paste. Just take the time to type in what is connected or in some cases distantly connected to me.

Well, Im more comfortable Thinking in human terms not mathmatical terms...so 15 generations back I imagine 15 sets or 30 people not 500,000. I mean what's the point? If I can tell you the names back to 30 AD because the records are that good for the ap Rices or RHys family that involves 300 to 600 names for each succeeding grandparent....YES? Why would it be useful to say there 99 million? Im not seeing the bennefit, and double counting seems not helpful to me....just sayin. DCR 1948

moi, mohter father,Andrew/Clara, Williiam Jr./ Mary Hall, William Sr./Polley Sager, Edward/Chairty, Samuel/Rebecca Mills, Samuel, Mary Earles, John Rice 1624/ Anne Hackley, John Perrott ap Rice1600/unknown mother, Thomas ap Rice/Margaret MErcer, John Rice II 1540/ Katrin Perrott, William ap Rice 1500/ Elizabeth Bateman, David ap Rice 1478/ Jonnet Mathews, Sir Rhys ap Thomas 1149/ Gwillian f Gwillum, Sir Gruffed ap Rhys, = 31 names or 16 sets of 2....isn't that the way we are supposed to search? If Im missing something sing out...Im listening...DCR 1948

John Smith

I feel that for some of us searching for our families that the best way to do it is with GENI.com Connecting everybody in the world will show the true path eventually. ;)

Well the way I figure is if you are looking for your direct line, then they should be the ones that you show no connection to or are distantly related? The only things we have to go by are records and DNA, and DNA is to new for me to trust. I would probably only take a DNA test once the paper trail is confirmed. The more people involved then the more records that will surface and the more correct each profile will be. Has to match up somwhere down the lines only so many people born that could have got married and the confision will start coming out. The puzzle piece only fits if its where it belongs.

I'm not sure if I know what I'm talking about though. :)

Well if you can't find your direct line? Right? And you are going through your grandma's line such as I am. Your Grandfathers line should be the most distantly related? Kind of like Yin and Yang? Opposites Attract. :)

Dale,
You are correct in saying that Gustavo's number of nearly 17 million is incorrect but your assumption that he has moved the decimal place is wrong.

In fact Gustavo is out by one generation and he should have said statistically every single person has 33,554,432 men who are their 24x great grandfathers.

It is a simple mathematical progression where the number of male ancestors doubles with each generation. 1 father, 2 grandfathers, 4 great grandfathers, 8 great grandfathers, etc.

Time frames are irrelevant, the only variation between statistical and actual numbers comes from "in-breeding", for example I have one man who is my 8th great grandfather in 3 different branches of my tree which means i have about 100,000 fewer 24x great grandfathers than is statistically possible (actually i have even less because of other gents who appear more than once).

Your dirtect line would only show up the closest if you know who they are right?

Most of all my connections to the ancient people are coming from my grandmas line, NOT the Wintons. I can't get past my 7th G-Grand dad, on my Winton family.

If you don't know your fathers line then they should not show up the closest until the line is connected, This is what I'm saying.

So if Henry the IV is my 24th great grandafather from grandmas side, I do not think he would be my 24th great grandfather on grandpas side.

Because the line is not complete past 1700 circa.

John Smith
Your grandfather is your grandfather is your grandfather, they are all direct ancestors no matter how far back??

I agree that my 25th cousin 14 times removed sister-in-law's great grandmother is not really a relation of mine.

Well Royalty really has no meaning to me especially these days, Back in the day they were some of the baddest of the baddest MILITARY wise which I have respect for. But nowadays I don't really understand what they are supposed to do besides look pretty. All I know is that a lot of the ancient Kings and Queens I am related to through my grandmother according to GENI.

These days science is royalty and rules the world... We are using bombs instead of swords. If you can't prove it... then it didn't happen. To me every Father thinks his daughter is a princess and his son a king. I never really have understood the Royalty thing? Nobody is better than anyone else to me, unless you have made sacrifices for others. To me that is royalty.

Alex Moes
I understand that they are still my grandfathers even though they are not through my Fathers line, but they are not from my fathers line which is what I call my direct line.

di·rect
diˈrekt,dī-/Submit
adjective
1.
extending or moving from one place to another by the shortest way without changing direction or stopping.
"there was no direct flight that day"
synonyms: straight, undeviating, unswerving; More
nonstop, unbroken, uninterrupted, through
ASTRONOMYASTROLOGY
(of apparent planetary motion) proceeding from west to east in accord with actual motion.
2.
without intervening factors or intermediaries.
"the complications are a direct result of bacteria spreading"
synonyms: face to face, personal, immediate, firsthand More
(of light or heat) proceeding from a source without being reflected or blocked.
"ferns like a bright position out of direct sunlight"
(of genealogy) proceeding in continuous succession from parent to child.
(of a quotation) taken from someone's words without being changed.
synonyms: verbatim, word for word, to the letter, faithful, exact, precise, accurate, correct More
(of taxation) levied on income or profits rather than on goods or services.
complete (used for emphasis).
"nonviolence is the direct opposite of compulsion"
synonyms: exact, absolute, complete, diametrical More
3.
(of a person or their behavior) going straight to the point; frank.
synonyms: frank, candid, straightforward, honest, open, blunt, plain-spoken, outspoken, forthright, downright, no-nonsense, matter-of-fact, not afraid to call a spade a spade; More
(of evidence or proof) bearing immediately and unambiguously upon the facts at issue.
"there is no direct evidence that officials accepted bribes"

To me the definition of direct says.. taken from someone's words without being changed.

This includes Surnames? Right

Hello Mr. Winton, By no means I was referring to you or anyone in particular, I have been researching my ancestors long before GENI came to our screens, I am very impressed by the Geni search engine, which will give us all the relationships possible in unbelievably short time. As a Venezuelan national, it is very likely to have a long list of Spanish ascent, but when I started going deeper in my research I got to Alphonse X "The Wise" (24 th ggf too)From then on and in other closer lines I start having English, Norman, German, Scandinavian, Russian and you name it how many great grandfathers..And as some of other participants in this discussion he (Alphonse)was also uncle, cousin with different grades of proximity (Removals). That led me to deduce something very interesting, speaking of the upward progression I quoted. There should be a x2 progression upwards,which cannot be considered so strictly, why ? Because when you get to let's say the 45th line, which most of us undoubtedly do have, we will find out that by the times of that said 45th line the world didn't by any chance have that figure as total population. Considering that, the tree starts narrowing ang the routes af ascent will start coinciding and make all of us relatives. It all makes sense, I'm writing to all of you in English, a christian language whose grammar, with very little exceptions is very much like my own.By the way, many of the roman names who founded the city of London will also be linked with us. Of course we will find all these coincidences with the history of our western world.. The interesting thing about all this IS that know we do have discussion n'est-ce pas ?

Nice to hear of you Gustavo Ferrero Gómez , and happy hunting. We are all on here for a main purpose and that is to trace our "DIRECT" Ancestors. :) Have fun!!

The way to get the number of ancestors, is simply mother and father (2) Grandmothers and Grandfathers (4), if you do the list (x2) with excel, you will see the result I wrote in the 24th line. But, As I said before, all those ancestors cannot be different persons, you will find out that many of them have many other relations (greatgrandfather in one line, cousin in another or uncle), simply because our countries of origin did not have that population at that time. On the other hand when you come down from those times, the formula is totally random, since a couple could have many children who would originate thousands of families. It is like two pyramids that intersect each other and produce a lot of possibilities. The good thing about all this is that we have had the privilege to have the right information because our ancestors have left record of our family trees and traditions. I believe this is something very valuable for all of us, genealogy researchers and enjoyers.

John Smith
I'm not concerned with DNA, if I cant find Direct line the old fashioned way then I reckon I will never figure out my ancestry. I'm sure not losing any sleep over it!
Anyhow I wish you the best in your pursuits of your famlies search.

Greetings Alex, thanks for your answer....It's just such a monumental number....I need one piece of paper that proves John Rice of East Anglia is the same person my Father Said was our first Ancestor in America....So when we go to statisitics of generations of pas relatives Im focused on one man.....Sorry, I think it's a gnerational thing....LOL Hopefully the Essex house of Records which has the baptismal records for St. John the Divine and Mary the Virgin of Stanstead will show the birth mother if not the birth father to John Rice 1624 who married Ann Hackley 1649. Once that connection is made we trace up both sides of the Ap Rhys line and the Tudor lines to Margaret Beaufort....I am a fan of hers, but not her grandson VIII if you get my drift....She did remarkable things with her resources and funding Queens College after Oxford I believe was the great gift to Western Civilization....That's one heck of a GGGGGGGGGGandma....and I hope to prove it next week...Kind regards and again thanks for answering...DCR 1948

Besides the point, I'm having fun researching the history and learning something new everyday! It's not all a waste. :)