It is said that if you pick an ancestor back ten generations, there would be close to one million descendants. Many of us probably have those "Aunt Marys" in our family that traced our ancestral lines back to "Noah", or at least back into the 1500-1600s. These will be our "ANCESTRAL" lines or looking from present to past ancesty.
Around 2012 or so, an emphasis was placed on finding all the collateral line descendants (or non direct line cousins) of a common ancestor. This is called "Descendancy Research". If you were to pick an ancestor just four generations back (such as a great-great grandparent), there will a total of FIFTEEN collateral descendant lines to research in addition to your direct line. Sorry…just when you thought that your family history was done! Actually, it is quite exciting to think that we can work on finding new people in these lines, AND during a time period when records are more easily found. Don't forget that your collateral line living cousins may often have photos, histories, or other information about your family members just waiting to be shared with you.
A "collateral line" cousin that I have never met, recently contacted me on our common 2nd great-grandfather. He had found a family bible page with the names of his 2nd great-grandfather's siblings on it. Suddenly, this dead-end-line opened up in both directions finding more direct line posterity and several collateral cousin line. And, as it turned out, DNA testing confirmed the many different descendant lines from this 2nd great grandfather.
Collaboration with these cousins that we have never met becomes quite important. The large databases like FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, etc, give you the ability to contact others who maintain trees and are providing information and media to their trees. Take the next step and contact them.
You will find that doing research on descendant lines is much easier now with all the records coming on line. It is certainly much easier than trying to find your ancestry lines before the 1800s.
