Two maps you drive yourself. Choose “step through the journey” and walk the world map forward one moment at a time with the arrows, from the first humans leaving Africa to the family's spread across twenty countries today. The U.S. map picks up the story in 1637 and carries it to the present. The glowing lines show which way people moved; watch for the popups that mark the big moments along the way.
The deep-time journey (100,000 BCE to 1273) follows the population-genetics and archaeology shared by everyone of English descent. Present-day counts come from Forebears surname-distribution data; the routes and figures for the eras in between are reconstructed from genealogical and census patterns. The shapes of the migration are real. Exact counts for, say, 1850 are informed approximations. See Sources.