Where do we begin? With ourselves, James Smith! Next we put down the name of our father, William Smith, and the maiden name of our mother, Mary Jones, and under each name collect all the biographical data possible. In the next generation there are four names. There is our paternal grandparent, William Smith, Sr., still hale and hearty, and his wife, Mary Doe, of sainted memory, whom we remember almost as well as we do the fragrant odor of her inimitable pies and cake!
Then there is our maternal grandfather, Colonel Henry Jones, a soldier and a gentleman if there ever was one, and his young wife, Mary Summers, whom we never saw because she yielded her sweet life in the throes which brought our mother into the world. Have we not often mused over that dear face, gentle and beautiful in the old daguerreotype! Many a tear have we shed over her sad story--in the sentimental days, before the callous cares of this world's business crept into our heart!
The names of all these we put down, gathering the materials for full biographies, and thus we continue with our eight great-grandparents, our sixteen great-great-grandparents, our thirty-two great-great-greats, and so on until we have unraveled the glories of the entire ten generations (if we can boast so many in America), with their 1,022 ancestors and 512 surnames.
The reader may ask, "Is this not as bad as a 'clan' genealogy? How shall we manage all these names and the reams of data?"
The fact is, however, that he who can boast himself to be in the tenth generation in even a single line is fortunate, and must have had an American ancestor contemporary with the Jamestown gentlemen or the Mayflower pilgrims. Undoubtedly many of our lines go back on this side of the Atlantic only four, five or six generations. Such cases subtract materially from our 1,022 possible ancestors and 512 surnames.
And let us suppose that when the Dutch stem of Schermerhorn and the French stem of de Lancey come into view in our family tree, we find Joneses again, and--yes, a little research proves that these Joneses also descended from the emigrant, Stephen Jones, the ancestor of our maternal grandfather, Colonel William Jones. The Jones stock is a fine brand, and three strains are none too many, but their appearance subtracts two more surnames from the theoretical number.