Women's History Month: Pattern of Children of My Female Ancestors

Women's History Month: Pattern of Children of My Female Ancestors

Lorine at Olive Tree Genealogy posted an interesting genealogical topic for Women's History Month, so I decided to share my father's family.

Instructions:

Make a list of your female ancestors beginning with your mother. Go back as far as you can. Now figure out how many children each female ancestor had. Did the females in your direct maternal line tend to have the same numbers of children each generation? Did they have more? Less? Were they prolific or are there few children born to each woman? Is there a pattern emerging?

Since this is my father's line I will be starting with my Grandmother.

Grandmother - Anna Boughner - 10 children - 6 boys, 4 girls

GGrandmother - Eliza York -  8 children - 3 boys, 5 girls

GGGrandmother - Elizabeth "Betsy" Frakes -  8 children - 5 boys, 3 girls

GGGGrandmother - Elizabeth "Betsy" Harry - 6 children - 4 boys, 2 girls

GGGGGrandmother - Barbara Bowman - 6 children - 4 boys, 2 girls

In looking for a pattern I found there were 38 children,  22 were boys, and 16 were girls.  Other than having more boys I don't see any consistent pattern.  Other than my great grandmother, they all had 2 more boys than girls.  She had two more girls than boys.  

My ancestors were all very prolific.  I think that was pretty consistent with the times.  My mother and father had nine children, 4 boys and 5 girls.  I think in this time frame the size of family had started dwindling, but they still had several.  I have 4 children, 3 boys and 1 girl.  So there is no continuing sort of pattern either.

This was an interesting topic.  I enjoyed looking at the family size.  This is something I hadn't really considered before.