ASCENDANTS

1 definition found

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  ASCENDANTS. Those from whom a person is descended, or from whom he derives
  his birth, however remote they may be.
       2. Every one has two ascendants at the first degree, his father and
  mother; four at the second degree, his paternal grandfather and grandmother,
  and his maternal grandfather and grandmother; eight at the third. Thus in
  going up we ascend by various lines which fork at every generation. By this


  progress sixteen ascendants are found at the fourth degree; thirty-two, at
  the fifth sixty-four, at the sixth; one hundred and twenty-eight at the
  seventh, and so on; by this progressive increase, a person has at the
  twenty-fifth generation, thirty-three millions five hundred and fifty-four
  thousand, four hundred and thirty-two ascendant's. But as many of the
  ascendants of a person have descended from the same ancestor, the lines
  which were forked, reunite to the first common ancestor, from whom the
  other descends; and this multiplication thus frequently interrupted by the
  common ancestors, may be reduced to a few persons. Vide Line.