The Searcy Ancestry Project

How Deep Did We Go?

A by-the-numbers summary of what was reviewed, what was produced, and what it found · measured from the project files, July 2026

140

direct ancestors documented

generations, back to 1387

~1,660

pages of finished work

~370

hours of research

What we produced finished works

The formatted, finished output — not counting drafts. Exact page and word counts, taken from the assembled documents.

953

Research Binder v3.0

pages · 364,000 words · the full documented compendium, three reading tiers

456

I Am Coming — the trilogy

pages · 230,000 words of narrative, plus 73,000 of bibliography and sources memos · three volumes, five centuries · free to read

221

The Methodology

pages · 78,000 words · the ten Genealogy Guides + methodology paper

Ancestral Workbook v7.13

spreadsheet tabs · 140 ancestors · 158 primary sources · zero-error formulas

Reader's Register

pages · the plain-language family reading copy — ~260 people, each with a confidence tier

Narrated audiobooks

all three volumes of the trilogy, voiced · 74 audio files, ~6.8 GB · now a podcast on Spotify

Finished, formatted output across the compendia: ~1,660 pages and ~680,000 words — roughly the length of eight full-size books.

The raw evidence collected and read — from single record images to entire historical volumes.

1,702source images and scans — census pages, pension files, wills, deeds, tombstones, the heraldic Visitations, the 1925 History of the de Graffenried Family, maps and portraits
746PDF documents — from single records to full volumes: the Victoria County History of Hertfordshire, Chauncy's Historical Antiquities, the History of Tishomingo County, the Krause DNA papers
158primary sources formally cited — each re-pullable, tied to a specific claim
19GEDCOM genealogy data files — the machine-readable family tree, versioned

Everything the project touched — finished works, drafts, working memos, research transcripts, and session logs.

~6,300

files

across the archive · about 12 GB in total

~13.1M

words written & worked

across every draft, memo, transcript and log — a measure of total effort, not finished length

~370

hours, ~65 active days

April–July 2026 · per the project's effort estimate

The family line traced back to Bern, 1387 (the de Graffenried patriline) and Derbyshire, c.1490 (the Needham line) — with ~79% of ancestors documented to a primary source.
DNA integrated on both sides: Y-DNA I-A16735 genetically confirmed the Searcy male line (via a documented match), and mtDNA J1c4k traced the maternal line — 31 Big Y matches in all.
Four Revolutionary-War Patriot pathways established for DAR lineage.
Landmark findings: the fabricated "Sir Arthur Needham" disproved and the true parents restored; the Three Aarons resolved from a pension register in the ancestor's own father's hand; the Swiss patriline documented to 1387; and the northeast-Mississippi family convergence mapped.