How to Find Descendants in the United States: Difference between revisions

'''More names per generation.''' One advantage of descendancy research is the potential number of names you could find. Most families have more than two children per couple. If all those children marry and have more than two children, there is a potential to find more relatives by descendancy research than in the same number of generations of pedigree research. However, to be fair, pedigree researchers also usually research the immediate children of each couple on their pedigree. In theory, assuming each generation has exactly four children who live, marry once, and have exactly four children, in three generations, pedigree researchers would find 42 relatives (counting spouses and immediate children), and descendancy researchers would find 106 relatives. With larger families the difference can increase dramatically. This way of counting names does not change the number of actual people who have lived—it only changes because of who you count as a relative.   

'''More clues.''' Descendancy research can lead you to important clues, contacts, or records such as family Bibles that you might not find if you researched only direct ancestors and their immediate children. Collaborating with new contacts about the new clues you find may help you get past dead ends in your ancestral research.