My curiosity was raised. I wondered how any of my direct ancestors I really have found in my own research. Just looking at pedigree charts didn't sink in. I made a list by generation. I thought I was doing pretty good. I had myself and my parents, of course. I had all of my grandparents, great grandparents, great, great grandparents, 29 of my 32 3rd great grandparents, and 37 of my 64 4th great grandparents. From there, it started dwindling a little more with each generation. Still, I was pretty proud that I had been able to find some from each generation, including one 12th great grandfather.
The double whammy hit me when I checked the chart and saw that you have 19, 384 sets of grandparents by the time you've reached the 15th generation.
Sometimes, it's good to do things differently than you normally do. Most of us just look at a few ancestors at a time or at our family group sheets and pedigree charts. Making a list of all of them I had found until I reached the generation where I hadn't found any yet made me made me realize a few things.
For one, I have favorite ancestors who I work on a lot and have all of their vital statistics and fairly complete life stories for them. I have other favorites who I have very little on or I'm stuck trying to find out who their parents were. These I spend too much time on because it bugs me that I can't get past them.
This little exercise pointed out to me that I have a large number of direct ancestors who I rarely ever research and only have bare bones on and numerous ancestors who I haven't even found yet. I didn't even recognize some of their names! I'm aware now that I need to spend more time on these ancestors and less time on those brick walls that I'm obsessed with.
So, how many of your 19, 384 ancestors have you found?