Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Ancestral Name List Roulette

It's Saturday Night again - time for some more Genealogy Fun!! from Randy Seaver of www.geneamusings.com. 

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) How old is one of your grandfathers now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel"). Who is that person?

3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."


My grandfather, Charles Sumner Stewart, would be 141 years old were he still living. My ancestral name list roulette number is then 35. Number 35 on my ahnentafel report is Mary Buchanan, one of my favorite ancestors.


Mary was born 15 Mar 1764 in York, Pennsylvania to George and Esther (Campbell) Buchanan. In 1787, she married George Eli Benefiel who had served with her father in the Revolutionary War. They lived in Jefferson County, Indiana where she died 21 May 1857. The couple had twelve children.


From the undated papers of Edna Lanham, family historian:

Mary Buchanan Benefiel was a fine pioneer woman, a faithful helpmate, and a good mother...She braved the hardships of the new settlements of Kentucky ad Indiana reared a family of twelve and enjoyed, so records say, 105 grandchildren. She lies in Jefferson Church cemetery beside her soldier husband, her gave being marked by the original stone.

From the papers of Fauna Mikhalko, genealogist, Madison Indiana held at the Jefferson County Historical Society, including family history of George Stewart, Madison, Indiana:

George Benefiel...wife was of Scottish descent. Her cousin, Claud Buchanan in Scotland was an author of considerable note, writing books of a religious nature. She was a second cousin of President James Buchanan...

Thanks again,Randy, for a fun exercise, even though I'm a little late:)