My Ancestral Surnames
Thanks to inspiration from Julie Szczepankiewicz in the Polish Genealogical Society of New York State Facebook Group, I put together a chart of my known ancestral surnames.
In the first column are my father’s father’s ancestral surnames. The second column are those of my father’s mother’s family. My mother’s father’s family surnames are in the third column, and the fourth column are the names of my mother’s mother’s ancestors.

Each generation has twice as many ancestors as the previous generation. I have four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents, thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents, and sixty-four great-great-great-great-grandparents.
I know most of my great-great-great-grandparents’ names, but not as many of the next generation. This is in part because of the paucity of records before about 1800 in many places.
You can see the full names of my great-great-grandparents in the ancestral tree at the top of my blog.