Ancestral Birthplace Chart A Little Saturday Night Fun

So, Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night fun challenge was to create a color-coded ancestral birthplace chart. This chart has been popping up all over the genea-blogosphere in recent days and it seemed like a fun idea. I decided to play along, too.

The majority of my ancestors were born and lived in Pennsylvania from their arrival in the 18th century. So my five generation ancestral chart is not very colorful. With the exception of my birthplace and of a couple of latecomers from Scotland and Germany, it’s all the same color.

Extending the chart to six generations makes it a little more colorful, but not that much.

Elizabeth (Buchanan) Bonnington’s birthplace is either Scotland or Ireland. Benjamin Houdeshell was born in West Virginia when it was still part of Virginia. And Reverend Frederic Waage was born in what is now part of Denmark, but was part of Germany at the time of his birth.

If I extended the chart to the immigrants for all those green boxes, the chart would still be nearly monochromatic. Most of those ancestors were born in Germany (or German-controlled locations such as Alsace-Lorraine), though some had ancestors born in Switzerland.

My Smith/Bonnington, Mulholland and Jones ancestors would add color as I would be able to add more Scotland and Ireland, as well as England and Wales to the palette. But here in the U.S. my ancestors were almost universally born in Pennsylvania, except for one line with connections to New Jersey and Rhode Island.

• Category: Fun stuff
• Tag: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun