Ascendants

ASCENDANTS. Those from whom a person is descended, or from whom he deriveshis birth, however remote they may be.
2. Every one has two ascendants at the first degree, his father andmother; four at the second degree, his paternal grandfather and grandmother,and his maternal grandfather and grandmother; eight at the third. Thus ingoing up we ascend by various lines which fork at every generation. By thisprogress sixteen ascendants are found at the fourth degree; thirty-two, atthe fifth sixty-four, at the sixth; one hundred and twenty-eight at theseventh, and so on; by this progressive increase, a person has at thetwenty-fifth generation, thirty-three millions five hundred and fifty-fourthousand, four hundred and thirty-two ascendant's. But as many of theascendants of a person have descended from the same ancestor, the lineswhich were forked, reunite to the first common ancestor, from whom theother descends; and this multiplication thus frequently interrupted by thecommon ancestors, may be reduced to a few persons. Vide Line.