Before too long, maybe even next week, I’m going to write a 15K story that is linked to Cassie and Flint Hamilton of my Fury Falls Inn series, which you may know is set in 1821 north Alabama. This currently untitled story will be included in a Rescued Hearts anthology along with 10-11 others that will release next fall, to benefit Hidden Acres Animal Sanctuary in Georgia. I’ve been doing the research, reading and interviewing falconers in Alabama, about Harris Hawks which are the featured rescued animal in my story. I’ve chosen a raptor because of Cassie’s familiar, Allegro, being a Merlin falcon. It seems fitting that her descendants would carry on her love of raptors.
The story will be set in the present day but featuring descendants of Cassie and Flint. Which got me pondering how many generations would there be between 1821 and today.
Now I love doing genealogy research and building my family tree on Ancestry.com as well as making timelines in a document so I have ready access to the information without having to seek it out again. So when I wanted to determine the number of generations, I went to my tree and counted back in my own ancestry. For my family, it would be something like 5 generations, which told me the relationship of the present-day character, too. Flint Hamilton would be this character’s great-great-grandfather. But wait! There’s more!
A spin off to my musings along this line is the advertising statement I’ve heard all of my life. Something like “Such-and-such company has served the community for generations.” It got me wondering about how you equate a span of years to a group of people. Mainly because in my family, among my siblings, there are 12 years between when my oldest brother was born and when I was born. So even our single generation of siblings spans 12 years. Not every family has 5 children, of course, so how does one compute the number of years associated with one generation?
According to my handy OED (Oxford English Dictionary), “In reckoning historically by ‘generations’, the word is taken to mean the interval of time between the birth of the parents and that of their children, usually computed at thirty years, or three generations to a century.” So it’s averaged at 30 years per generation, which in my particular case works out exactly 30 years between when my parents were born and my oldest brother’s birth, which is ironic to me. But what the OED definition/explanation tells me is that I need to have 6 generations back, not 5, to be the typical span of time. So, Flint is now this character’s great-great-great-grandfather. I always knew Flint was a great man, but that’s a lot of greats!
The next step I need to do is identify the intervening generations of parents/grandparents in case I should ever want to write another story spinoff from that series. Hmm… Maybe I should make a family tree for Flint and Cassie’s descendants for fun and future reference. Probably just on paper though. I wouldn’t want anyone else using Ancestry.com to think they’re related to my fictional characters! Now where can I find a sheet of paper large enough to draw a family tree?
Thanks for reading!
Betty
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Fury Falls Inn in 1821 Alabama. A place for ghosts, witches, and magic. A place of secrets and hidden dangers.
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