Tony Smith Family Tree - 2004 update:

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Now (2004) I have found some ancestors earlier than 11 generations back from me.

At the 11th generation, I have 2^11 = 2,048 ancestors, of whom I have found only 3 (John Chew who came from England in the 1600s, and Roger Thompson and Sarah Walker).

At the 4th generation, I have 2^4 = 16 ancestors:

If the Gordon, Stewart (not spelled in the French no-w Stuart way), McKennon, McKinnon, and McClellan lines are mostly from Scotland; and if Lowry, Thompson, and Gwynes are mostly English; then I might be (approximately as estimated at the 4th generation level):

 Of course, if you go back far enough, your ancestors will NOT all be distinct. For example, at the 6th generation, Robert Dickerson, who came from England to Virginia and then to South Carolina, is my double-ancestor because he was the great-great-grandfather of both my grandmother Clara Dodd and my grandfather James Smith, who were therefore 3rd cousins.

11 generations takes me back about 400 years. At 30 generations back, maybe about 400x30/11 = 1,091 years ago, or about 909 AD, I have 1,073,741,824 ancestors, which is more than twice as many ancestors as the total population of Earth at 909 AD. As far as I know, there is some chance that anybody (or even everybody) on Earth in 909 AD could be my ancestor.
In 2004, my cousin Fred Smith found some web pages
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~chute/gp691.htm#head0
http://gen.culpepper.com/historical/nneck/3c-holling.htm#2nd_Lord
that, along with some others such as
http://gen.culpepper.com/historical/howard/default.htm
allowed me to find an ancestor back in 1170 AD. Here is how that chain works:

 

 

Therefore, my earliest known ancestor is Thomas Culpeper (1170 - ), 23 generations back. At that level of ancestry, I had 2^23 = 8,388,608 ancestors, so it is not surprising that one line includes the sister of the lover (Thomas Culpeper, d 1542) of the fifth wife of Henry VIII. That Thomas Culpeper and I had as common ancestor Alexander Culpeper, 15 generations back, at which level I had 2^15 = 32,768 ancestors.

Thomas Culpeper (d 1542) and his love, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, Catherine Howard (1521-1542), were themselves cousins through the Culpeper line. Catherine Howard (1521-1542) and I had as common ancestor Thomas Culpeper (1230-1309+), 20 generations back, at which level I had 2^20 = 1,048,576 ancestors.

Note that the numbers indicate that it is not uncommon for anybody who tracks their ancestry back that far to find at least one chain that has some contact with prominent people. In fact, since a prominent chain is more likely to be well documented, it is easy to overemphasize its importance in any individual's genetic makeup. Although (so far) the Culpeper chain is the only chain as to which I have been able to go back 20 generations (to my common ancestor with Catherine Howard), that ancestor and his wife contributed only 2 / 1,048,576 of my genetic makeup, the vast majority of which is, as far as I know, probably more Scot than anything else, but generally pretty much mongrel.

Some other interesting connections from the Culpeper chain are:

 

 

 

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