So Far Away – Week 6 (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks)

Amy Johnson Crow, of No Story Too Small continues the challenge to the geneablogging world to write a blog post weekly on one ancestor. This could be a photo, a story, biography, or a post on the weekly theme. To read her challenge please go to Challenge: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – 2015 Edition. Feel free to join in at any time!

Although the prompt for this week’s 52 Ancestors post is “So Far Away” and as Amy Johnson Crowe explains: “Which ancestor is the farthest from you, either in distance or in time/generations? Which ancestor have you had to go the farthest away to research?” – I have a different take on that. Some ancestors have been born in Germany or Great Britain, but I’m going to write about how close of a kinship I have with an ancestor who is by general standards several generations removed.

One of the definitions that Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary gives for generation is: “the average span of time between the birth of parents and that of their offspring.” YourDictionary.com explains the “average time” as a “period of around thirty years”. Taking that span of time in to consideration, if a couple – born in 1900 – has a child between ages 25-30 years old, when that child is 30, the parents will be 55-60 years old. If the pattern continues, that couple’s grandchildren will be born when they are 85-90. That is only 3 generations born from 1900-1990.

However, looking at statistics in my family tree database from the early 19th century forward parents were between 18-26 when their first child was born making the generation from grandparent to grandchild 36-40 years with very little deviance. That is until it came to my paternal side.

This is how the Amore side of my family stacks up: my dad was 40 years old when I was born. So instead of the average of about 20 years between generations, there was two times that. My dad’s oldest sister was 18 when he was born so there was almost a full generation between him (as the baby of his family) and his sister. His father was a little more than 39 years old. That would mean my grandfather (had he still been living) would have been close to 80 years old. That is four times twenty. Taking the average of my family tree database, one more generation could have fit between my grandfather and myself. My dad was old enough to be my grandfather (well, let’s not tell him that!). There is a full generation between my brother and myself. He was 21 years old when I was born. As with me, my father’s oldest niece was five years younger than him. My oldest nephew was born I was not quite four years old!

Lloyd William Amore, my paternal grandfather, was born on March 4, 1882 in Coshocton county, Ohio. He was the fourth child and third son to William Henry Amore (Henry) and Mary Angelina (Annie) Werts. Henry was almost 30 years old when my grandfather was born. By the time his last child was born in November 1893, he was close to 42 years old. Henry’s father, my great-great-grandfather (William Amore), born in February 1828 was just over 24 years old when his second wife gave birth to Henry. William was almost 49 years old when his last child was born (the child didn’t live). The span of years between William’s birth and my birth is almsot 134 years. That is a at least 6 generations on average. SIX! And in my case it was 1) William 2) William Henry 3) Lloyd William 4) my dad 5) me.

My dad’s oldest niece (my first cousin) who is five years younger than my dad, became a grandmother when I was three years old. My dad became a first time grandfather when my nephew was born. So he was a grandfather in his early 40s as well as a parent to a young child!

So in the immortal lyrics of a Frankie Valli song – my 2nd great-grandfather, William Amore, is “so close, so close and yet so far.”