Family lines

I spent part of the weekend taking a look at the family tree.  My dad has been working on it for a few years and has made a lot of progress.  There’s now 1,447 people in the tree.  He’s got back 13 generations on one line to 1660 and most others to early 1700s.  On my direct descendent line (excluding all the sibling lines - aunts, uncles, cousins, etc) there are 136 folk.  This part of the tree is complete back to my 4th great-grandparents.

The thing I find interesting about both elements of the tree (my direct line and in general) is the lack of mobility and mixing.  On my paternal side my grandfather’s line is from west Cumberland and grandmother’s line from Bucks/Northants.  On my maternal side my grandmother and grandfather’s lines are from the West Midlands.  There are only a handful of people not who were not born or died in those areas, including the few that emigrated to Australia or the US.  On my direct descendent line there's only one person not born in England: Francis Higgins, born in 1785 in Ireland, who moved to Cumberland and married Ann from Gosforth, and whose granddaughter, Isabella, married John Kitchin in 1860 (my 2nd great-grandfather).  With the exception of the small number born/lived overseas, there are very few people born elsewhere out of the 1,331 other people in the tree - 6 in Ireland, 3 in Scotland, 2 in Wales, 1 in Germany.  Pretty much everyone married someone from within a few miles of where they grew up and lived there their whole lives.  Seems stasis is something of a family trait.