#52Ancestors - Fun Facts

​This week’s theme for #52Ancestors is Fun Facts.  A few years ago there was a brilliant website online for genealogists with some useful apps called Twile.  You uploaded your family tree and the app created the below graphic with lots of fun facts about your family history.  Mine is slightly out of date and unfortunately I can’t renew it as the website sadly does not exist anymore.  Shame!

Image of Twile, my family in numbers

​I was surprised to see that it is almost balanced between men and women although not surprised that I have slightly more women on the tree. 
 
Some of the other figures left me feeling very surprised, 2 5/7 average number of children?  That seems quite low when you think about how many families in the 18th and 19th centuries had lots of children.  But it takes into consideration that many families on my tree have not had their children searched for yet.  Research to follow!  In fact I had a look at my family tree and discovered I have one family that had 16 children.  Imagine that, 16 children?! There are 27 families with between 12 and 16 children.  Of course not all those children survived to adulthood.
 
What about 25 being the average age for marriage.  That’s seems a little old to me but apparently the perception that people married a lot younger in those days is not generally true.  I was once told by another genealogist that it was not unusual for girls under 16 to marry and to marry much older man.  Again the only girls under 16 marrying on my tree are obviously errors from trees I picked up in the early days and because they are side branches, I’ve not checked them yet.  I found one couple this morning on my tree who apparently married at 112 and 115, I found the marriage, the date was wrong they were in their early 20s when they married.  Date corrected.

​Another stat which I find odd and is probably down to the amount of people on my tree where I need to search for and add the death date, is the average age of death being 49.  Many of my ancestors lived to a ripe old age.  The oldest was my great great grandmother Phillis Funnell who died at the age of 98.  I have 36 ancestors who died over the age of 90, not bad for a bunch of agricultural labourers.  I am sure there are more to add to that number once their deaths are found and added to the tree.
 
Here’s an interesting fact, nobody on my tree was born on Christmas Day, 6 were born on New Year’s Day and 4 on Valentine’s Day.  There was also two others born on my birthday 17 February, strangely they were siblings, born 9 years apart.  I also had two forebears who were born on 29 February. 
 
I’ve just found out by visiting my tree on Ancestry and by using their Anniversaries that 133 years ago today, my great great grandparents James Cruse and Alice Rhoades were married. 
 
What other fun facts would you be interested in finding out about your own family tree?