Gateway Ancestors

All,
I've been on this list nearly 3 years now, mostly as a lurker. Just
today, I realized that I still don't understand exactly what is meant by a
gateway ancestor.

I just counted and I have 12 ancestors who came to Australia from other
countries. I'm descended from those 12 and no others. I had supposed, by
analogy, that those were my Australian gateway ancestors.

But surely there are Americans descended from ancestors that arrived
after 1701 (which is where DRs book seems to start - I mean Plantagenet
Ancestry, I suppose MCA is the same). And some of those doubtless have
royal, noble or whatever descent that can be traced to medieval times. Is it
that those arriving before 1701 have some special cachet? And if so, why?

Doug McDonald...

There is nothing special about 1700 except that 1700 is
evenly divisible by 100.

fairthorne...

what do you mean by that?

Doug McDonald...

just that somebody . i.e. Richardson, has used that fact
to justify stopping at that date. People often stop things
at round decimal numbers, like 10, 100, or 1000.

Doug McDonald

that it is a multiple of 100

evenly divisible by 100 suggests that it is divisible by 200!

Srinivasa Ramanujan claimed that every number is special in some way, eg
1729 is the smallest number that can be written as the sum of two cubes in
two different ways, so why not choose that?

but 1607+100=1707 so in fact 1707 would be equally reasonable.

It is true that gateway people arriving after about 1680 or
1690 tend to have fewer living descendants than those who
arrived earlier: thus, you gain fewer sales ... which is
what matters ... for you book by including later gateways
than earlier ones. GBR includes the later ones, but excludes
many early ones too if they don't suit his fancy.

Richardson has one big big exclusion: he doesn't do Scotland
or Ireland, at least except very roundabouts. GBR does.

Doug McDonald

Best,
Ken