35 million descendants of the Mayflower?

[Pam Downes]

Firstly, apologies for non-UK residents who will be unable to listen to the programme.

I was searching the BBC website for a programme about the Mayflower, and found this radio one which examines the claim that there are 35 million descendants from people who travelled in the Mayflower alive today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct2dk4

However, most of the details in the talk can also be found in this link, so those of you overseas won't miss out on much after all.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57698818


In other news, which will depress you if you think you're making real progress with your family tree, if you count yourself as generation one, by the time you get back to generation sixteen (your 13 x great-grandparents) you've got 32,768 of them, so you're definitely going to need a bigger wall on which to display the family tree.

If you want to keep numbers to a more manageable level, then settle for going back to generation ten (your 7 x great-grandparents) with just 512 to find.
Seems unbelievable that in six generations your direct ancestors increase by over 32,000 people.

If you count a generation as twenty-five years, then ten generations will take you back to the 1770s.
Sixteen generations go back to the 1620s.

[Lesley Robertson]

Hmmm.. In that case, it looks as though I’m lucky that so many of the family on Mum’s side married their cousins and distant cousins. I even have one 18th century lady who married 3 times and I descend from all 3 of her husbands (via her grandchildren and g.grandchildren).
That’s real pedigree collapse!