Family history research has traditionally been about finding your ancestors and moving back in time. Your ancestors contributed their lives, stories, and DNA to make you, so it makes sense to seek them out. However, there is a practical limit on how far back in time you can go. Not even DNA can fully answer the question of our furthest ancestors. Descendancy research, or looking for your cousins, can help push your tree further back and break genealogical brick walls.

Advantages and Disadvantages

There are a number of advantages in doing descendancy research. Your cousins are your family, even distant cousins. Finding your cousins does expand your tree. This kind of research is essential when incorporating DNA evidence. Descendancy research can also help break through brick walls and move your tree back another generation by providing connections to others also researching the same individual. Perhaps they know something you don’t!

Descendancy research can be slow going though. If you do the math, the number of descendants of specific ancestors can number in the thousands ore even millions! I have done partial descendancy research on two ancestors. In both cases I identified about about 2,000 descendants from only one child of that ancestor. One ancestor had 14 children, which could equal about 28,000 descendants. I suspect that number is low and the actual number is much higher. Going one generation further back and then coming forward, those numbers increase even more.

This is, of course, just simple math. Reality is far more complicated making it difficult to come up with exact numbers. This discussion on Wiki-tree is interesting, especially in the types of assumptions that have to be made to calculate the posssibilities. Even if the predictive numbers are not accurate, we are talking about a lot of potential descendants from any one ancestor.

If you are in the unique situation where your family tree is filled out for 5 or 6 generations, then the research going further back becomes difficult due to lack of records. Coming forward in time to find your cousins can be a new area to research and explore. Finding your cousins can help those cousins find their ancestors by connecting to your tree and research. It becomes a win-win for you and your cousins.

Ancestry Thrulines

Ancestry Thrulines is a tree hinting system that incorporates DNA matches. Ancestry compares and overlaps the trees of DNA matches to suggest new relationships. While these hints have to be researched before accepting, it is a useful tool to help expand a tree. The key, however, is for you and your DNA matches to have a tree.

Many DNA test takers, if they build a tree at all, have a minimal tree. Many of these trees have the test taker, parents, some grandparents, and if you are lucky, great grandparents. This means the likelihood of the DNA matches tree overlapping with yours is slim. Trying to figure out the most recent common ancestor becomes a challenge.

I noticed the ancestors with the most Thrulines suggestions were the same ancestors where I did some descendancy research. This is because a tree with descendants provides Ancestry with greater tree match points. Those descendants overlapped with the DNA match’s minimal trees. Both myself and my DNA match could receive a Thrulines hint based on the work I had done. If you are doing any kind of DNA research, descendancy research is absolutely essential.

How To Start Descendancy Research

A family tree provides a lot of possible places to begin a descendancy research project. Evaluate your tree and look for an ancestor that draws your interest. It could be an ancestor with a brick wall or one with an interesting story. Regardless, look at the ancestors born about 1800. Depending on where your ancestors lived and what is known, you may need to go back a bit further or a bit forward in time.

An ancestor born about 1800 has a greater likelihood of living long enough for important records to be available. For example a person born in 1800 would be 50 years old in 1850. That person likely appears in the 1850 census with some or all of their children. Their children will have lived in a time with even more abundant records. In other words, choosing an ancestor born about 1800 provides a reasonable starting point in finding ancestors for which records exist. Records availability makes this kind of research easier.

There are some tools to help you evaluate your tree like Puzilla. Puzilla links to a FamilySearch account and provides visualization tools that help you find potential research opportunities, including descendancy research opportunities. It is also just as easy to use FamilySearch or Ancestry to look at a fan chart or tree to find a potential starting candidate.

Evaluate Your Ancestor

Once you have selected your ancestor, evaluate all the attached source records carefully. Are there missing records? Have all the potential census records been attached? Are there missing record types, such as land, tax, or probate. Perhaps new clues can be gleaned from the existing records, such as missing children, marriage dates, etc. Repeat this same step on your ancestor’s spouse.

I did descendancy research on one of my ancestors, John Hugh Pelt and his wife Sarah Caroline Essary. John was born about 1809 in North Carolina and Sarah was born about 1815 in Tennessee. They were married and lived in Lawrence County, Tennessee. They had 14 children, 5 girls and 9 boys. It is not clear if all of their children survived and had their own children, but most of them did!

I began by looking at all of the source records for John Hugh Pelt. The key source record for him is the 1850 census which lists him with most of his children. The 1860 census lists Sarah, presumably a widow, with some additional children and grandchildren. There are potentially missing records for both John and Sarah but these two census records provide a good starting point.

Next, start with the oldest child and repeat the process. In this case Elizabeth Pelt is the oldest child of John Hugh Pelt and Sarah Carolina Essary. Elizabeth has an interesting story and as I an unraveled it, I was able to connect missing descendants and connect with DNA matches!.

Once I worked out all the possible descendants from Elizabeth, I worked my way back up the tree to her sister Hannah. Hannah disappears, so it is not clear if she ever married or had children. So I moved on to the next sibling, James N. Pelt. James dies in the Civil War, but he was married with children so I was able to trace all of those descendants. And so on.

Use Ancestry and FamilySearch

It is helpful to work in both Ancestry and FamilySearch when building a descendancy tree. Both provide record hints from different collections almost instantaneously which can be attached and provide documentation as you work. FamilySearch likely has some of the descendants already on the Family Tree. Those descendants need to be evaluated carefully, but they also provide a hint when building your Ancestry tree. I will build my descendancy tree in Ancestry but also help clean up FamilySearch by adding missing individuals and attaching records. The whole process can be quite addictive where you will feel like you need to add just one more person before quitting for the day.

Stop building your descendancy tree when you run into living individuals. There is no need to add living people unless you have a reason.