Message Font: Serif | Sans-Serif
Subject: Re: Charting Date: 11/25/2012 2:17 PM
Recommendations: 0
The numbering systems work fine for families of 3 or 4 generations, but for families of 10 or more generations the information you are trying to follows gets spread all over. That is why I prefer to list everyone alphabetically by first name. Then their parents or children can easily be followed without resorting to the index.

That sounds interesting.

My mother's family appears to have arrived somewhere between 1630 and 1640, and never left town. They married cousins and distant cousins, and often named their children after their brothers or sisters. And they all had about 10 kids that lived to adulthood. The result is craziness.

I've started poking around a bit with the Excel chart, just to see what information might be useful. Entering the chart number will help, and I thought I could include the person's relationship to me, which might help when I'm trying to figure out which John Collins I'm talking about, or whether there are two Morris Hobbs, or five, or one. Putting the grandparent, parent, child relationship might help, too.

Having everyone remain in the same area is a huge help in some ways, because everyone is there, and research can be limited to just a few towns. Lots of people have already done a lot of the groundwork. I don't have to figure out whether someone from five states away is a relative. But it can cause confusion when the same people keep marrying cousins.

and that can't possibly be the man in the story because he'd been dead for 25 years when that event took place!
Print the post  


What was Your Dumbest Investment?
When Life Gives You Lemons
Community Home
Speak Your Mind, Start Your Blog, Rate Your Stocks

Community Team Fools - who are those TMF's?
Contact Us
Contact Customer Service and other Fool departments here.
Work for Fools?