look it up on Wikipedia its the old wheat or rice problem in on a chessboard start off with you two parents and work your way back if its in the same area as your family lived and the fact that they had many more children than now how could they not be related to you.
Did they even know the proper dates themselves ions ago I read one of the Somerset Wills volumes 14th centuary I think (the only one we had at home). Because of a recent plague a lot of people were due to prove who they were for inheritance purposes they had witnesses to speak for them to prove relationships but the evidence was more interesting than the claims. Proof was something like born at the time of the big storm to whoever and whoever. The time of the good harvest, or things like a ships name that had been wrecked or the good harvest of onions when pickers had to come here from say Ireland. Any even people/Judge would remember or could verify. Most of them couldn't read or write but they had very good memories.
My grandmother was shown a lease type document by a family member that showed the property had been leased for a small rent for 900 years.Eldest son to eldest son. She then sat down and worked out how much the family had spent in rent over that length of time, plus fue dues and all the other stuff it was surprising how much it had added up to in total.
