84 STANDARD OF COMPARISON. 



* 



fame may be represented by the respective number of ballots which 

 they received. As a preliminary to our investigation I have chosen 

 to take these twenty-nine men and apply to them our test of ances- 

 tral use as it will appear from the ages at which reproduction oc- 

 curred. My reason for choosing to begin with this list is because 

 I find it already made up, and consequently it cannot be charged 

 that it was selected with reference to the age of their parents at 

 the time they were born. Another reason is that I can trace the 

 ancestry of these men more completely than I can that of any simi- 

 lar group of men not specially selected with that object in view, 

 and it is part of my plan to trace a few in an elaborate manner to 

 serve as a basis for the larger group of men which I shall discuss in 

 a succeeding chapter. 



SOURCE OF STANDARD SCALE. 



It is one thing to state that a child's parents were of certain 

 specified ages when the child was born, and quite another thing to 

 know what that statement means after it is made. It is therefore 

 evident that before we can draw any just conclusions in regard to 

 the birth-ranks of these men we must establish a standard by which 

 to measure them, and that this standard must not only tell us the 

 average age of parents when children are born, but must give us a 

 number of subdivisions so that we may locate each individual at 

 his proper place in the scale. To produce such a standard I have 

 taken the "Redfield Genealogy" (edition of 1860), and have cal- 

 culated the ages of parents for the recorded births in the eighteenth 

 century. I have chosen the eighteenth century partly because the 

 records for that century are fairly complete, and partly because 

 the majority of these famous men were born during that century. 

 The Redfields born at that time were mostly born in Connecticut, 

 or in substantially the latitude of Connecticut, which is also ap- 



