This is my first contribution to the e-group, although I did write to the Genealogist about a Huguenot forebear who was both an army captain and a pastor in the French Prot Church until the church fathers in Geneva put their collective foot down. This was around 1690/1700, shortly after he got away from Montpelier. My daughter is the 15th in a line of mother-daughter descent - you could call it the Feminists' Family Tree. Much of it is quite easy as from my great-grandmother and back from her everyone lived in Guernsey and a fair number of them married cousins. The earliest I have been back is to an Elizabeth de la Marche, baptised in 1610 and born in Guernsey. She appears to have had relatives who were pastors and are commemorated in the Town Church in St Peter Port. Can anyone else trace as long a female line descent? I would be interested to know. I, my sister and two cousins can all the fourteenth in line, but at the moment it appears that my daughter Louisa might be the only one in the fifteenth line - certainly in the northern hemisphere. But there may be someone lurking around in Australia of the same generation. Jane Brown ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gordon Adshead" <gordon@adshead.com> To: <SOG-UK-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, May 19, 2006 6:47 PM Subject: Re: [SoG] Large family > At 18:01 19/05/2006, Peter Park wrote: >>Tracing a family in the 1841 and 51 censuses, I found they had eleven >>children. Nothing odd in that, but they were all girls, which is a bit >>uncommon. Statistically the older children of a marriage tend to be boys >>and it is not uncommon for the first seven to be males, but eleven girls >>on the trot must be a record -unless you know better!! > > I'm sure your right about the low statistical probability Peter > But in this case surely it is much more likely that the father's genetic > make-up was only capable of (or heavily biased towards) female offspring. > > > > +Z_______________+Z_______________+Z__________________________+Z > <www.adshead.com> Gordon Adshead Manchester Design Technology > Beaumont House, 2 Goodrington Road, Handforth, Cheshire, SK9 3AT, England > Tel:Fax:Msg:+44-1625-549770 Mob:+44-777-6145602 <gordon@adshead.com> > > >

In message of 20 May, "Jane Hammond" <trident@btconnect.com> wrote: > This is my first contribution to the e-group, although I did write to the > Genealogist about a Huguenot forebear who was both an army captain and a > pastor in the French Prot Church until the church fathers in Geneva put > their collective foot down. This was around 1690/1700, shortly after he got > away from Montpelier. > > My daughter is the 15th in a line of mother-daughter descent - you could > call it the Feminists' Family Tree. It is also called matrilineal (as opposed to the more commonly studied patrilineal) descent. Google gives over 120,000 items if you search for "matrilineal descent". Obviously it is rather difficult to establish a matrilineal line in a European culture because of all the name changes so a line of 15 sounds a great achievement. -- Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim@powys.org              For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org