This is just amazing

ancestry.com is working today, so I started entering some information. My info about a distant GGGG+mother, Mehitabel Kingman, died 1772, mother of Ruth Wade, 4 more generations down to my grandmother. Anyway, it triggered ancestry to find someone else's family tree, so now I have 4 more generations on top of her. Woah. Dude. Check it out. People being born in the 16th century in England and dying in the 17th in Bridgewater, Plymouth, Mass. (Or, more worryingly, Salem, Mass.)

And then I get to Fanny Goodrich (b 1782, parents were first cousins) and WHAM, it's got 5 generations running around in Connecticut. OK, once you get to one set of the grandparents, it's the same on both sides.

I'm now going to enter the bare essentials of my dad's side that my grandma did 20 or so years ago. We smack into Germany pretty early on for grandpa's side, of course.

P.S. Hey Mom! Is Otis Shepardson the Civil War Captain (?) who ran off with his secretary? I have Lydia on Grandma's chart and have an Elizabeth as his wife elsewhere. Oh wait, it just came up with a Mary E on a census record as his wife in 1880 and 30 or 40 years younger. So where did I get an Elizabeth Johnson?

P.P.S. I think Elizabeth must be Lydia's mom. But why is she in the census as George J's grandmother Johnson when Lydia's maiden name was Calvin? Remarriage, I guess. I made a hash of adding her in a couple of weeks ago. I'm trying to figure out how to unlink and clean up and erase. Sigh.