Genealogists do well in giving a realization of the importance of the
family, but they err if they base this teaching altogether on the
family's pride in some remote ancestor who, even though he bore the
family name and was a prodigy of virtues, probably counts for very
little in the individual's make-up to-day. To take a concrete though
wholly imaginary illustration: what man would not feel a certain
satisfaction in being a lineal descendant of George Washington? And yet,
if the Father of his Country be placed at only four removes from the
living individual, nothing is more certain than that this hypothetical
living individual had fifteen other ancestors in George Washington's
generation, any one of whom may play as great or a greater part in his
ancestry; and so remote are they all that, as a statistical average, it
is calculated that the contribution of George Washington to the ancestry
of the hypothetical living individual would be perhaps not more than
one-third of 1% of the total. The small influence of one of these remote
ancestors may be seen at a glance, if a chart of all the ancestors up to
the generation of the great hero is made. Following out the
illustration, a pedigree based on George Washington would look like the
diagram in Fig.
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