SNGF with Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings

I always seems to miss participating in Randy Seaver's SNGF but this week, thanks to some early posts by other bloggers, I was reminded and will participate. 

As you may know Randy poses a meme each week for bloggers to blog or comment about.  Tonight the meme is:

1) Determine who is one of the most prolific fathers in your genealogy database or in your ancestry. By prolific, I mean the one who fathered the most children.

2) Tell us about him in your own blog post, in comments to this blogpost, or in comments on Facebook.

Most times, when I read various memes posted by genealogy bloggers, several ancestors come to mind who could fit the critera and I can choose which one to write about, but with this meme, there was no doubt in my mind about who I would write about. My maternal gt gt gt grandfather, Jonathan Wise has any other ancestor beat hands down. 

Jonathan Wise was born in Greene county, Pennsylvania on the 28th of February, 1799.  He was the oldest son of a family of nine children.  As a young man he moved with his family to Monroe county, Ohio.  There he met his wife, Jennie or Virginia Young, a young Irish lass and they married about 1822.  His first child was born in 1823 and regular as clock work, every two years another child was born.  In February 1839, Jennie died, probably in childbirth or shortly after, as a son Jonathan Wise Jr was born 12 February 1839. 

So in seventeen years Jonathan and Jennie had eight children. 

Within a year, Jonathan married again to Martha Antill, a young woman eighteen years his junior.  By March of 1841, their first child was born and he continued to father children for the next seventeen years with his last child born in 1858.  Chances are Jonathan would have continued to have more children, but he died in March of 1859 at the age of 60. 

So in another seventeen years, Jonathan and Martha had ten children.

In total, between his two wives, Jonathan had EIGHTEEN children;  SEVEN girls and ELEVEN boys.  All of the children lived to adulthood except one son who apparently died as a young child. 

SNGF Challenge - Using the Relationship Calculator in Your Genealogy Software

Even though it is Sunday afternoon, I wanted to step up to the challenge issued over at Genea-Musings by Randy Seaver and his Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, SNGF for short.  His challenge is:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (come on, don't be a party pooper...) is:


1) Open up the genealogy software program of your choice.
2) Think about two special people in your family tree (your parents? your spouse? a famous person? a distant cousin? yourself?).
3) Use the Relationship Calculator in the software to determine the relationship between the two special people. If you don't know where to find the Relationship Calculator, go to the Help button and find out. Follow the directions!
4) Tell us about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a comment to this post on my blog, or in a Note or comment on Facebook.

Like Randy, I used RootsMagic4 for this exercise.  I don't have too many people in my family tree who are "famous", however I did discover I am related the Bill Gates of Microsoft fame so I thought that would be a fun relationship to document.  Unfortunately, like John Newmark over at TransylvaniaDutch, I didn't have all the information in my database.  But what a great opportunity to do that so off I went to gather the online resources and put the pieces together.  I found a digital version on Google books of "Genealogies of Connecticut Families"  that has been extracted from The New England Historical and Genealogical Register by Genealogical Publishing in 1998.  I wasn't able to download the book but by using OneNote I was able to take snapshots of the pages I wanted relevent to the Gates family (my line and Bill's line) and then paste them into a word document. 

I then found a site showing Bill Gates' ancestry compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner and others with the caveat that "the following material on the immediate ancestry of Bill Gates should not be considered either exhaustive or authoritative, but rather as a first draft."  I was able to verify the older generations listed on this website by using the "Genealogies of Connecticut Families".

As it turns out Bill and I are related as 8th cousins 2 times removed.  Our MCRAs (most common recent ancestor) are Stephen Gates born ca 1600 in Hingham, England and his wife Ann Veare, born 1603 in England also.  They married  5 May 1628 in Hingham, England. (The American Genealogist, vol. 10, p. 199, April 1934) Stephen Gates was the immigrant ancestor and arrived in 1638 on the ship Diligent of Ipswich, John Martin, master.  The family settled in Hingham, MA

SNGF with Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings

My mission should I choose to take it: 
1) Tell us: Which ancestor or relative do you readily identify with? Which one do you admire? Which one are you most like, or wish that you were most like? Which one would you really like to sit down and have a heart-to-heart conversation with?

I would really like to have a heart-to-heart conversation with my 4th gtgrandfather, Jacob Wise (1771-1845).  Here are some of the questions I would ask;  "Did he come from Maryland or Virginia?  Was his wife Mary Wise?  Were they cousins?  What did he do while living in Greene co, PA?  I have found no land records for him; only the sale of one house lot.  Did he rent land to farm?  Did he have another occupation? A cooper or a blacksmith? Was Greene county just a stepping stone to his ultimate goal: Ohio?  But the biggest question of all would be "Who was your father?"  For genealogists I guess that is always the question but I have been looking for his father for 35 years and I still don't feel any closer to the answer.

Once the conversation got started, more and more questions would beg for answers.  What were his dreams?  Was he a kind man?  Did he believe in equality; for woman, for all men?  Did he believe in fun or was there only work.  I know he was a founding member of a Methodist Episcopol church in Monroe county, Ohio where he moved with his large family in 1814.  Did his religion bring him joy or was it a burden?  Was he proud of his large family.  He had 9 children, 4 girls and 5 boys. Did he like to sing?  What was his favorite food?  Oh, the list would go on and on.