Counting Cousins in SNGF

If it is Saturday, then Randy Seaver is at it again and here is our mission:

Murphy-Keough Cousins' Surnames
made with wordle.net - thanks

1)  Take both sets of your grandparents and figure out how many first cousins you have, and how many first cousins removed (a child or grandchild of a first cousin) you have.

2)  Extra Credit:  Take all four sets of your great-grandparents and figure out how many second cousins you have, and how many second cousins removed you have.

HINT:  Make a Descendants Chart with your genealogy software program!

3)  Tell us the grandparents and great-grandparents names, but don't give the name of living cousins unless you want to.  

4)  Are there any of those lines that you don't know all of the cousins names?  Do you care?  

5)  Tell us about them in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook or Google+ post of your own.  Be sure to drop a comment to this post to link to your work. 

I have lots of cousins but I had not really stopped to think about how many until tonight. Having tooled around in Legacy Family Tree (my genealogy database software of choice) I was familiar with something in the miscellaneous report section called Relationships. Running the report shows me how I am related to everyone in my database (because let's fact it, it is all about me!). Of course you can change the person of interest and run the Relationships report for them but that is not the mission - stay focused.

For this mission and this blog, I choose the Murphy-Keough direct line (my permanent tag 1). I printed the report to a csv file, then saved it as a Microsoft Excel workbook. Finally I filtered the data in my workbook - yes, you guessed it, Excel will let you filter your first cousins, your first cousins once removed, your first cousins twice removed, and so on and so on. Now I am ready if next week's mission is second cousins, third cousins and fourth cousins (or any other relationship).

So who are my people and what are my stats - well I'm glad you asked.

My grandparents Andrew Francis Keough and Dora Josephine Murphy had three sons and three daughters, one of whom is my father.  I have seven (7) siblings and twenty-one (21) first cousins. Oh yes my aunts and uncles had children and we grew up visiting at my grandfather's home on a regular basis and we took summer vacations together when we were young. We still get together for family reunions and had one just last summer.

Thanks to the Legacy Relationships report (in my handy dandy Excel workbook) which was crosschecked for quality control purposes - I have eighty-three (83) first cousins once removed, seventy-three (73) first cousins twice removed and thirty-three (33) first cousins thrice (is that a word?) removed. I am sure that I don't have all our family members included, but this mission definitely tells me that I have some cousins I need to get in touch with and get more information from.

I want that extra credit Randy mentioned (and Legacy did all the hard work). My paternal great grandparents Patrick Keough and Mary Driscoll had ten (10) children and my maternal great grandparents Lawrence Edward Murphy and Catherine Matilda Murphy (those who follow my LVUG Community Tuesday's Tips will recognize this couple and no, they were not related) had twelve (12) children (what can I say - I am sure the names gave it away but we are 100% Irish Catholic on this line).

I have two hundred twenty-seven (227) second cousins - fifty-three (53) are second cousins, one hundred fifty (150) are second cousins once removed, and twenty-four (24) are second cousins twice removed. I also have one hundred eighty-eight (188) third cousins of all stripes, and fifty-seven (57) fourth cousins of all stripes (that means I added together the standard issue and the removeds for each of these classes of cousins).

I am sure I don't have everyone and that is part of the reason I blog. In answer to Randy's question, I do care about those missing cousins as I want our family history to be inclusive. So, if any of these names are familiar, we might be related - so contact me! 

There you have it, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, part one. Now I have to do this same mission again for the non-Irish side of my family (otherwise known as my mother's side of the family). 

Mission Accomplished!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – April 12th edition

This week’s SNGF posted by Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings was definitely one mission that I could accept and accomplish. The only problem was that the results of the mission show I still have lots of work to do citing my sources! 

Randy’s mission (cue that Mission Impossible music) was as follows:

1. Have you done a good job of citing your sources in your genealogy management program or online family tree?  How are you doing?  How many source citations do you have, and how many people are in your tree?  What is the sources to persons ratio?
2. Which master source (e.g., 1900 U.S. census, Find A Grave, specific book, etc.) do you have the most citations for?  How many?  How did you figure this out?
3. Tell us in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or on Facebook or Google+ in a post.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your post on this blog post.

I use Legacy Family Tree for my genealogy management program. In order to find the answers, I ran two reports. The first was a Statistics Report which gave me a total of 6,630 individuals in my main family file. (It also gave me lots of other fun statistics – births, marriages, and deaths by era or gender; number of children in a family by size or era; frequency (called popularity) of surnames and given names, in total and by century; number of unique locations as well as their frequency (again “most popular”), but I digress). The second was a Source Citation Report. I checked the boxes to number the master sources and to include the number of times the master source was cited and who used that master source. I have 131 master sources (did I mention that I am a lumper?). 

My Legacy Source Citation Report - in order of source names and
includes number of individuals using that master source

The Source Citation Report provides the master source citation as well as number of times it has been cited. There are a number of options (to include the individuals who use the master source, the citation detail, text, and/or comments, the surety level of citations, and the evidence analysis of citations). What was unclear (at least to me) is the entry order in which the Source Citation Report appears. After a bit of searching I discovered that the order is based on the source list name you have given your master sources as they appear in the Master Source List (an aside -  you can also see the total number of master sources right in the Master Source List). Since I organize by category, then by location, and then by date, my books show up first (all in alphabetical order), my censuses show up together (again in alphabetical order by country, state where appropriate, and then by year). Once you understand the order and you number the master sources, the Source Citation Report is a more useful tool (and it might affect the naming pattern you choose for your Master Source List).

Page 1 of my Legacy Source Citation Report begins with Books and are numbered
(I organize by category, note the source name lists as shown below)

First up as you can see is Death Records of Pierce County, Washington
as you can see the source list count is also shown here in the Master Source List

What I did not see in the Source Citation Report was the total number of source citations (perhaps I missed something). So I added together all the source citations (how many times each of the 131 master sources was used – that is where the source detail is used). I have 2,633 particular source citations. Assuming that each individual in my family file should have at least 5 source citations (birth, baptism, marriage, death and burial – and that does not even include any citations for the standard events/facts like census, military service, naturalization, etc.), I should have at least 33,150 source citations. It looks like I have some work ahead of me. 

This whole going back through and working on my source citations was my planned project for 2014 – I am doing it in small bites, an hour at a time. Right about now I think it might just be my planned project for 2015 as well. Did I thank you for that splash of cold water Randy? And how about we rename “sources to persons ratio” to something a bit more fun like “genealogy sources golden ratio” and give out virtual badges when we reach certain levels (I need some kind of "pat on the back" for this necessary but daunting task).

 

Okay, back to the mission - My top three master sources by use (assigned to and used with a person – you know that pesky source citation detail in Legacy) are:

• 175 individuals  -  U.S. Census 1930, population schedule (with the top locations being Nebraska and Washington)
• 169 individuals  -  U.S. Census 1920, population schedule (with the top locations being Nebraska and Washington)
• 168 individuals  -  Find A Grave 

Finally, I agree with Randy’s thoughts on the quality of these reports. The Statistics Report and Source Citation Report are a good start but I would like more useful statistics and even greater detail to appear in these reports. I did find a way to gather this information in a useful format by using the search capabilities in Legacy. More on that in next week’s Tuesday’s Tip over in the Legacy Virtual Users’ Group Community on Google+. 

So, how did you fare with this week’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun mission?