Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: April 8, 2017

Randy at Genea-Musings has given us this challenge:

1) Pick one of your sets of great-grandparents - if possible, the one with the most descendants.

2) Create a descendants list for those great-grandparents either by hand or in your software program.

3) Tell us how many descendants, living or dead, are in each generation from those great-grandparents.

4) How many are still living? Of those, how many have you met and exchanged family information with? Are there any that you should make contact with ASAP? Please don't use last names of living people for this - respect their privacy.

5) Write about it in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or in comments or a Note on Facebook.

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I chose to pick my great grandparents, Leroy and Ada (Steen) Parker, seen above at their 50th wedding anniversary celebration with their three surviving children in 1950. I made a list, by hand, of the descendants of Roy and Ada Parker.

They had four children, all now deceased.
They had twelve grandchildren, eight of whom are now deceased.
They had twenty-four great grandchildren, five of whom are deceased.
They had forty-five great great grandchildren, two of who are deceased.

I stopped at the generation of "great great grandchildren," because the family has grown so large, and spread across the country, that I do not know all of the ones in this generation, besides the Steen Parker line.

All of the people in the picture, Grandpa Roy and Grandma Ada, Uncle Glenn, Aunt Janet, and Uncle Paul, I knew. I talked most probably to Uncle Glenn's wife, Aunt Florence, who told me a lot of family stories. And Grandma Ada left her family notebooks to my mom, and is one of my main inspirations for loving family history! I have talked with almost all of the grand children and great grandchildren of Grandma and Grandpa Roy, especially at family gatherings, weddings, showers, and funerals. The stories of the old family farm in Perkins Township are especially precious to me

....as well as the stories of Grandma and Grandpa's days at the Cedar Point amusement park.

Thanks for this fun trip down memory lane, Randy! As I was thinking about the causes of death of so many family members, it made me sad to think of how many were lost to disease and tragedies. It is so good to keep the memories of these dear ones alive!