As we have established, our 6GM was around in the early 19th century, at the time of the first census when the population was around 7 million. I have also seen estimates around 9 million so for these purposes, let’s say the population is around 8 million.
In our attempt to regain at speed our rightful share of power, we can greatly reduce the amount of work and hasten the process if we approach the solution not only from the most recent relative working backwards in time but also from the most distant relative working forward.
Clearly the researcher will not know whether they are personally related to this woman, our 6GM, aged 18-30 in 1801, who is bearing these children, but these researchers are doing us all a priceless service – they are doing no less than saving the species from extinction.
There are 8 million people around in the UK in 1801. Of these, we can say that roughly 4 million are women. Of these, around one quarter will be aged 18-30, approximately 1 million young women.
We can search through these and find the women who had the greatest number of children, maybe taking one quarter of the above – the 250,000 women with the most siblings and who had three or more children. The population expansion throughout the 19th century indicates that there will plenty of women who fall into this category.
And we can list their children, including their female children. We have thus identified the latter as the 5GM women from the most prolific mothers. In this way we can help potentially the greatest number of people build their Gen with the least amount of effort.
People did not move around as much in those days so we can view the country as the 92 traditional counties of the UK – sometimes called the historic, ancient or geographical counties.
We divide our women between them and weight those numbers according to population densities in the counties using figures from 2019.
In 2019, we see that Greater London has 8.9 million of the population of 65 million. That’s 14% of the population. In 1801 a smaller area had approximately 9% of the population so let’s allocate 10%. The next two biggest areas of population – Birmingham and Manchester – have 4% of the population each. And then West Yorkshire with 3%. We can then weight the remainder as either 2 or 1%.
Returning to our population in 1801 and our 92 counties, we can therefore ascertain that we are looking for 6GM women in London who number approximately 25,000. In Birmingham and Manchester, it’s 10,000 each. In other major cities – Liverpool, Bristol, Sheffield, Newcastle, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast – it’s 7,000. In smaller cities of roughly the size of Leicester, Nottingham, Coventry etc it’s 5,000. In large towns, 2,000. In small towns 1,000. And in villages we can find 10 6GM women.
This is no small task and if each volunteer took ten 6GM women then we would need 25,000 volunteers. Sounds like a fair few, but we need only 0.03% of the population to understand how important this task is and we are up and running.
Looked at from another angle, if we look at this undertaking in one village, we are looking for 1 volunteers in each village to trace 10 6GM women each. In London we only need 2,500 volunteers. This does not sound unachievable when the importance of the task is considered and the fact that what is done lasts forever.
Each volunteer’s first task would be to register with a central database. If this book succeeds then I will take it upon myself to set up this database and will announce its web address. I will be the first volunteer. And I will find four friends who believe in this enough to do the same.
Our next task as volunteers is to visit freebmd.com and find the names of ten prolific 6GM women in our chosen area. Before we go further, we can enter the name, date of birth and location of each woman on the database to reserve that investigation and to check that we are not duplicating someone else’s work. And from there, we can start our research.
It seems to be the case that the older generation quite frequently take an interest in genealogy and might already have identified their 5GM in the 1820s, or even their 6GM, a young woman alive in 1801. Also it is worth noting that the Mormon religion make it a requirement that members trace their ancestry.
In both cases, I would encourage them to straight away set up their social media group using the notation previously described so that hard work that has already been done is not duplicated.
And so we commence our research on the 6GM women and identify all her siblings and children.
We then set up a group in the manner described, i.e. “gen6GMOriginalsurnameInitialD.O.B.location”.
And in the first post on the group we see listed the full original name, married name, date of birth and location of our 6GM matriarch. And we see the same information about her siblings and her children, including her daughters. These daughters are our 5GM generation.
It is helpful to list the sons’ names as well. If someone traces their patrilineal line up to the 5GM generation then in an instant they can see their 6GM matriarch. This saves a great deal of work in trying to find the birth surname of the woman in each generation.
This crucial contribution bridges the gap between the 1801 census and the first full census of 1837, in which the children of our 5GM women will appear.
Meanwhile, from the other end of the timeline, our readers are working out their 2GMs, and their 3 and 4GMs The 6GM group awaits their arrival and will soon be flooded with thousands of members.
There will of course be people joining from all over the world, lending strength to the international and global character and nature of this endeavour. Particularly we may see a great number of Americans of Irish stock who, since their ancestors crossed the Atlantic, have greatly multiplied over the last 180 years in the U.S. – it was considered a Catholic’s duty to multiply and both contraception and abortion were not allowed. Again, there may be much already discovered genealogy that can be contributed across nations.
And then finally there is just one more entry into the first post of every newly forming 6GM Gen group. At the bottom of this first post we see the name of the person who did the work and created the group. We can put in as much information about ourselves as we care to share. It was us who returned a share of power to thousands of people and our name should be remembered as one of the first generation who saved the human species. We are immortalised in that Gen and will be forever remembered by its members and all their descendants.
The birthday of this group is the birthday of the 6GM matriarch and on that day every year for the rest of time, all its members, wherever they are across the planet, will be raising a glass to us.
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