11 May 2013

Where's Your Brickwall? - Results

Thanks to the 102 people who participated in this survey.
In response to the question "Working back from yourself along all your ancestral lines, at which generation do you first encounter someone for whom you can't
identify both biological parents by first and last names?" The most common answer was 2 times great-grandparents. A couple of people left comments about adoption and illegitimacy but these are not otherwise entered in the survey. Congratulations to the two responders who were able to answer six and eight times great-grandparents.

A surprising result is that 50% of those with a suspected Irish brickwall stated 2 times great-grandparents whereas for those with an English or Welsh brickwall 39% stated great-grandparent and only 22% two times great-grandparent.

As mentioned in a post yesterday slightly more men than women were the brickwall person. The survey was dominated by 74 responses from Canada where the trend for men to be the brickwall person was even more pronounced.
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2 comments:

  1. M.C. Moran11 May, 2013 22:55

    "A surprising result is that 50% of those with a suspected Irish brickwall stated 2 times great-grandparents whereas for those with an English or Welsh brickwall 39% stated great-grandparent and only 22% two times great-grandparent."

    Interesting. Where is the brick wall (at what generation, I mean) for the other 39% of those with English or Welsh ancestors?

    I would expect the Irish brickwalls to emerge at a later chronological date, with an early- to mid-19th-century birthdate for the brickwall ancestor, rather than anything earlier than that (so, closer rather than more distant in the backwards generational countdown from one's self, in other words: at 2x- or 3x-great-grandparent rather than at 4x or 5x). It is rare to find reliable documentation for an Irish ancestor born pre-1800. The records, or lack thereof, simply don't allow one to go back into the eighteenth century.

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  2. Linda Reid12 May, 2013 08:19

    If people do autosomal DNA tests on a number of known 2nd and 3rd cousins, they might find a brickwall they didn't previously know was there.

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