Families

My original plan was simple – create a family tree documenting the ancestral origins of my parents, Fred Bertrand and Helen Kelly.  In a short time, it expanded in order to make this the tree of reference for all immediate family members of Bertrand / Kelly heritage as well as their offspring.  Thus it expanded to include families of my brothers in law and aunts / uncles.  As with everything else, it is very difficult to avoid project creep so the final expansion included documenting the ancestral origins of my daughters in law.  At time of writing this paragraph, the tree includes slightly over 2,300 people. Root families include:

Bertrand / Kelly – my parent’s families

Bertrand / Bellisle – my wife’s family

Bertrand / Pikksalu – sibling’s family

Bertrand / Collins – sibling’s family

Bertrand / Greenfield – sibling’s family

Bertrand / Fedesco – child’s family

Bertrand / Swick – child’s family

Kelly / Rusk – Uncle Bud’s family

Kelly / Brennan – Uncle Les’ family

Bertrand / Lemessurier – Uncle Frank’s family

Clearly we are families of immigrants!  The only difference between the families is in how long they have been in North America.  Most got here from Western Europe but a couple came from Eastern Europe and Russia, generating a mix of DNA that has strengthened the group rather than weakened it.  The pool is diverse (in terms of national origin) and descends from a combination of royalty and pauper.  Just a couple of generations ago many of the ancestors were illiterate.  It is amazing what a common belief of making things better for children can do to the benefit of the next generation!  It is also inspiring to see the number of people who have given up all that they are familiar with on the gamble that a better life awaits them and their children in a new location.  We are truly fortunate to have had such adventurous parentage.

A little bit of mathematics as it relates to levels of parents / grandparent: 

It becomes clear very quickly that the number of people to be counted as ancestors expands exponentially as we move up the tree.  Look at the table below to see how many people are to be accounted for at each level of the tree.

Person	Math Symbol	Number of People
Me	20	1
Parents	21	2
Grandparents	22	4
Great grandparents	23	8
2nd great grandparents	24	16
3rd great grandparents	25	32

So, as a general rule of thumb, the number of people at a particular level is 2 to the power of (Level of great grandparent + 2).  For instance, a 4^th great grandparent level would be 2⁽⁴⁺²⁾ or 2⁶ providing 64 people at that level.  Going back further to the earliest immigrant from France I find him to be a 9^th great grandfather.  Using the formula above, we calculate 2⁽⁹⁺²⁾ or 2¹¹, yielding 2,048 ancestors at that level!