Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy (5 page)

You may come across trees that depict relationships between parents and a child using a dotted vertical line rather than a solid one. This can be used for various circumstances. In the past when illegitimacy was deemed to be a problem, particularly for wealthy families for reasons of inheritance, a dotted line might indicate that a child was born out of wedlock or as the result of an affair. It can also be used to highlight a non-blood relationship between parent and child in cases of adoption.

‘It is vital to keep updating your tree after every discovery so that you can see at a glance what your next research step should be.'

You can now repeat the process you used for your own generation to put your parents' siblings either side of their names, each set of their parents' names above their branch, and keep repeating the process as far back as you can. The further back you work and the more siblings there are, the more difficult it can become to have them in age-descending order. You may find it more practical to put all your aunts and uncles, great-aunts and uncles and so on in age order but leave the name of the direct ancestor at one end of each branch so as to keep the diagram clear. If you do not know a woman's maiden or unmarried name, leave her surname blank so that you can fill in the space when you discover it. The same rule should apply to any other details you are unsure of, such as dates of birth, marriage or death. These will give you points to work towards, so that every generation has a complete set of details whereby each person's full name and their dates of birth, marriage and death are all known.

Some genealogists include occupations on their trees simply by writing these underneath each person's vital details. Having occupations displayed on your tree can help you to keep your work focused, so that if you are looking for a Jack Brown on the 1901 census you can use your tree as a reminder of his date of birth and marital status, and also of what job he should be described as holding. This can be of assistance if there are lots of people who have the same name in your tree but who can be distinguished by occupation. For example there may be a John Smith who was a woodcutter and a John Smith who was an engine driver. Alternatively, if a particular name was carried down through many generations you may find it useful to add a roman numeral after their name, indicating which generation they belong to. In this way the first William Perry, whose name was passed down to his son, then his grandson and great-grandson, would be known as William Perry I, his son would be William Perry II, his grandson would be William Perry III, and so on.

A family tree is not always drawn in a diagram, but can also be written using indented paragraphs. This requires the use of many of the abbreviations listed in the box in
Abbreviations in Family Trees
to explain relationships in
place of branches that would otherwise be drawn. Known as the ‘narrative indented pedigree', this is not always the easiest method of reading a family tree as it can sometimes be confusing to follow, but it is the most straightforward way of typing up your tree if you are using a word-processing package to record your family tree, which does not allow you to draw branches very easily. It is also very handy to understand this method of describing a tree because some pedigree publications use this style, like
Burke's Peerage and Baronetage
and
Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage
(see
Chapter 4
). The indented pedigree starts with the earliest known ancestor and their marriage, and then lists the children from this marriage in age-descending order (although sometimes female children are listed after the male children instead). To list the children's offspring an indented paragraph is added under each child's name where their descendants' details are written. Therefore a narrative indented pedigree might look like this:

    
James Sherwood
m
. Alice Clarke. Had issue:

      
John Sherwood
b
. 1648 and
m
. Jane Cecily.
dsp
.

      
George Sherwood
m
. Carole Vine and had issue:

         
Simon Sherwood
b
. 1672

         
Joseph Sherwood
b
. 1675 and
m
. Mary Shanks 1699.

         
He
d
. 1722 leaving issue:

            
Katherine Sherwood
b
. 1702

            
Grace Sherwood
b
. 1705

         
Emily Sherwood

      
Sarah Sherwood
b
. 1645.

      
Faye Sherwood
unm
.

This pedigree explains that James Sherwood married Alice Clarke and had four children, John, George, Sarah and Faye. John married Jane Cecily but he died without children. George married Carole Vine and had three children named Simon, Joseph and Emily. These were therefore James Sherwood's grandchildren. His grandchild Joseph Sherwood married Mary Shanks in 1699 and died in 1722 leaving two daughters, Katherine and Grace, who would have been James Sherwood's great-grandchildren.

Irrespective of what style of family tree you eventually decide to use, it will hopefully grow too big for your original piece of paper, so you will probably need to break the tree into sections to make it more manageable. While it is nice to have your entire family tree on one piece of paper, you should be constantly referring to it to help organize your
research, and for this reason it usually makes more sense to break it down into smaller branches, perhaps with your paternal side on one tree and maternal side on another. Some people find that smaller trees of individual generations are useful for taking to archives. These can then be updated regularly and annotated while you are in the archives, and the new information transferred to your master family tree at a convenient time.

Here are some examples of words and abbreviations used specifically in family trees:

b.
born

m. or mar.
married = married

2.
second marriage

d.
died

ob.
or
obit.
died

d.s.p.
or
o.s.p.
died childless

d.v.p.
or
o.v.p.
died before father

1.
left descendants

bapt.
or
bp.
baptized

chr.
christened

bur.
buried

lic.
licence (marriage licence)

MI
monumental inscription

c.
circa or about

?
uncertain or unknown

o.t.p.
of this parish

w.
wife

s.
son

s. and h.
son and heir

dau.
daughter

g.f.
grandfather

g.m.
grandmother

g.g.f.
great-grandfather

g.g.m.
great-grandmother

inf.
infant

spin.
spinster (unmarried woman)

bach.
bachelor (unmarried man)

unm.
unmarried

div.
divorced

wid.
widow (a woman whose husband has died)

wdr.
widower (a man whose wife has died)

mat.
maternal or female side of the family

pat.
paternal or male side of the family

Distaff
female side of the family

Spear
male side of the family

Online family trees and family tree software packages are extremely helpful to collate your tree in its entirety so that you can share it with other family members, and to organize the end product of your research. Using these resources saves you the effort of constantly rewriting a large family tree if you run out of space or make mistakes, because you can easily log onto your electronic tree and edit the details as needed. Most genealogy software now saves your family tree and genealogical data as a GEDCOM file, which stands for Genealogical Data Communications. This has been created to make sharing your tree easier, regardless of the software you use.

The important components of a comprehensive family tree are:

•
Names, including Christian or forename, surname, maiden name and any nicknames

•
Dates of birth, marriage and death

•
Place of birth, marriage, death and abode

•
Occupation

You can buy computer software packages to upload onto your PC, such as Family Tree Maker, Roots Magic, Family Tree Builder and Family Historian – all are popular and very flexible in how you can organize your data. They will come with instructions on how to print out your tree once you have uploaded it using the software, and most software now shows you how to build your own family history website using one of their website templates. Alternatively, there are many free family tree tools available from genealogy websites, which just require you to register your details on their website to create an account, after which you can share your tree with other enthusiasts online. Most of these also give you the option of keeping most of the details on your tree private or only accessible by users who ask for permission to view your tree first.

The four sample websites described below will be looked at in more detail in
Chapter 4
in the context of the sets of data and documents they offer, but their family tree building tools and software are examined here.

Genes Reunited is a sister site of Friends Reunited and works as a database of family trees, enabling people to find others who are looking for the same ancestors. Other users will not see your full family tree unless you grant them permission after they have emailed a request to view it. You can search the Genes Reunited database of names, years and places of birth to see if any match the people in your tree. To make contact with other researchers you need to upgrade to a full membership for a small fee. When uploading your family tree, each person you add has a fact sheet to complete, listing their names, dates and places of birth, marriage and death, occupation, any notes, and a photo. You can view your family tree in a drop-line format showing all your relatives, just your ancestors or descendants, or your immediate family. It is possible to search the database's collection of historical records and merge these into your tree, and the software will automatically use these to create a lifeline for each person showing the key events of their life. Genes Reunited also has a special print function for printing out your family tree diagram.

Ancestry is an online genealogy company that provides, along with many millions of records, access to family tree building software and
the facility to upload it onto their website. They have created a free online template that can be accessed by clicking the ‘My Ancestry' link along the top of the homepage. The Ancestry family tree facility creates a homepage for each person on your tree, where you can enter their dates of birth and death, their spouse's details and children's names, upload photos, write a biographical story, and add events to a timeline. A summary of the information you enter is displayed on a family tree showing the direct line, working from left to right. Ancestry has a search facility that checks the details you enter against its collection of historical records and other users' family trees to see if there are any matches. This can help you get into contact with other people who may be researching part of your tree (which is usually because you are related somewhere along the line). You can change the privacy settings for your tree so that it can only be viewed by those people you email it to, otherwise the default setting puts your tree in the public domain so that other Ancestry users can find the information it contains.

MyHeritage is a genealogy company that provides free family tree software that you can download from their site. This software allows you to create a family tree on your computer and add photos and documents to it using a simple interface. If you wish, you can then publish your family tree online to share it with family members. The MyHeritage.com
homepage also lets you create a free family tree online, without downloading software. This is done in your own family website which you can use for sharing photos, events and news with family members. This approach, often named ‘web 2.0', is suitable for users who prefer a web-based experience over using a software program. Special genealogy technologies found only on MyHeritage (both the website and the software) include face recognition technology that helps you tag people in photos and recognize unidentified people; and tree-linking technology called Smart Matching that can connect your family tree to more than 1.5 million other trees on MyHeritage. Smart Matching helps you enlarge your family tree and find new relatives and ancestors. Also on MyHeritage.com is an extensive genealogy search engine that searches more than 1,500 online genealogy databases.

Family Search is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, otherwise known as the LDS Church. The Church has been gathering and preserving genealogical records from around the world for over 100 years. You can either upload a GEDCOM file of your family tree from your computer onto their website so that it can be viewed by other researchers when they search the website's collection of ancestral files, or you can download free Personal Ancestral File (PAF) software from the website and save your tree on your computer as a PAF file. PAF software allows you to enter information about each person's birth, baptism, marriage, death, notes about the sources you have found, and photographs that can be used to form a scrapbook. You can view your family tree in Family View, which shows you a person's immediate family, in Pedigree View, which displays the direct line in a diagram working from left to right, or in Individual View, which lists each person in your tree and their birth details.