Re: Todd family - common root?
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In reply to:
Re: Todd family - common root?
Diana Thornton 8/11/01
Mathematically that is quite correct: if everybody has 4 children, then after 12 generations there will be 4^12 = 16,777,216
descendants of your initial TODD ancestor.
However if half the children are girls and they marry and take their husbands' names, then 16,773,120 of these descendants will have a different surname. Only 4096 of them will be TODDs.
Furthermore, if the assumption that everybody had 4 children were correct, then the population would double every generation. http://www.gendocs.demon.co.uk/pop.htmlhttp://www.gendocs.demon.co.uk/pop.html shows English population estimates for the years 1570, 1600 and 1630, ie. at intervals of about one generation. It can be seen that the population was growing by only 16% each generation. At this rate of growth, your initial TODD ancestor would have only six TODD descendants in the 12th generation.
Of course, this is just an average. Some of the people living when surnames became established would have no descendants with their surname after 12 generations; others might have 20 or 30, or perhaps even a couple of hundred (in a very prolific family). However it is highly unlikely that anybody would have several thousand.
More Replies:
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Re: Todd family - common root?
Diana Thornton 8/18/01
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Re: Todd family - common root?
Andrew Gough 10/22/01
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Re: Todd family - common root?