Notes For Genealogy Pages
My philosophy in creating this database is to make one page for each ancestor (husband and wife). Those pages are accessed from the family indexes. On each ancestor family page, I have attempted to go down to the great-grandchildren, i.e. second cousins to us. I make a few exceptions, such as when I can find a fifth or eighth cousin who is a “known” person (not very many of those), or for third cousins who remarry back into the main lines. I rather like the idea of cousins marrying, so I make some attempt to note whenever that happens and provide links back to the other branch of the family. My main interest is our own family, and accordingly mark how each set of children relates to us (“us&8221; being myself and Rita). I admit this is rather egocentric, but my purpose is to provide this for our family, and it is not meant to be an authoritative reference work. For that same reason, I have not been too concerned with providing sources. I do try to list these for the few families where I actually have hard copies of certificates, but most of the families in here (and I do tell you which ones they are) are gleaned from website sources. You can find those as easily as I did.
Identity theft and other invasions of privacy are an unfortunate fact of life, therefore I have omitted all living people from this compilation. If you see someone here that you know to be living, please contact me and I will remove them. This omission means I had to leave out everyone below Generation 3 (our grandparents). Family members may contact me, and I will send you everything I have.
Reference numbers for direct ancestors follow the Sosa-Stradonitz or Ahnentafel System: starting with yourself (in this case me, or Rita) as 1, then your father is 2, your mother 3, your father's father is 4, etc. This method of numbering one's ancestors is used worldwide, and has the advantage that every direct ancestor has a reserved number, even if we have not identified the person who goes into that spot. It also means that for any person anywhere on the tree, we simply double that person's number to get their parents. And for any set of parents on the tree, take one-half of the father's number to get the number of the child (in direct line to us). [Starting with each of us as 1 means that there are some duplicate numbers, e.g. there is a person numbered 14 in both the Hale and the Beahm pages. This should not cause much confusion since everyone on Rita’s side will only be interested in the Hale/Sorensen/Sorenson/Spencer pages, and everyone on my side will be looking only at the Beahm/Hawley/Stupak pages. We are also helped by the unfortunate fact that the family trees for Rita’s mother and for my father are very poorly known, so there is almost no actual overlap of numbers. Where there is any cross-referencing between families I always specify BEAHM # or SPENCER #.]
One known problem with this system, which affects us, is when cousins marry. That makes the tree collapse two or more generations back, because the cousins had the same grandparents or gr-grandparents. For example, in Rita’s family, 42 Thomas Caldwell and 43 Lucinda McBride are first cousins. The mother of Thomas is 85 Charlotte McBride, and the father of Lucinda is Charlotte's brother, 86 Jacob McBride. This means that the father of Charlotte and Jacob, Thomas Crawford McBride, is numbered both 170 and 172. Thomas and his wife, and all earlier generations, would have to be repeated on two branches with duplicate information. This also causes problems with numbering other children and grandchildren of the double-numbered parent. What I do is to assign one of the numbers as primary, based on which child's line carries the name furthest -- in this case Thomas > Jacob > Lucinda -- so Thomas' primary number would be 172, and I would base his ancestors and his other children on that number.
Another problem is how to number other children and grandchildren -- i.e., siblings and cousins to the main line. For this I invented (or thought I invented) my own system -- I found out later that it already exists, and is called the d'Aboville System. Each child uses his parent's number, adding another digit at the end, separated by a decimal. Thus the children of 42 Thomas Caldwell are 42.1 James, 42.2 Martha, 42.3 Samuel, etc. The child of 42.5 David is 42.5.1 Chester.
This has a major advantage over other systems, in that later discoveries can easily be added in without major changes to the numbering scheme. It also allows us to instantly see which family a person belongs to, as all descendants of Thomas Caldwell will have some extension of 42. The main disadvantage is that unrelated spouses, as well as their parents and siblings, do not get assigned a unique number -- thus the wife of 42.5 David has no number, because she is related to us only by marriage.
By using this system, we can look at a person's number and immediately tell what relation they are to us. Whole numbers are direct ancestors, one decimal number indicates a sibling to the main line (or great-aunt to us). Two decimals are first cousins, three decimals are second cousins, etc. (To get the number of “removes” requires some information on the generation of the person.)
Cousins may be a bit confusing. Most everyone knows that if you have the same grandparents you are first cousins, and the same great-grandparents makes you second cousins. Things can get a little confusing when we add in the “removes”. To find out how someone is related to another person, we have to draw a simple tree going back to the common grandparents:
common ancestor
____________________________|___________________________
| |
gr-gr-grandparents gr-gr-gr-aunt
| |
gr-grandparents <== first cousins ==> 1 cous 3 rem
| |
grandparents <== second cousins ==> 2 cous 2 rem
| |
your mother <== third cousins ==> 3 cous 1 rem
| |
YOU <== fourth cousins ==> 4th cousin
| |
your kids <==fifth cousins ==> 4 cous 1 rem
|
4 cous 2 rem
Of course, the relationship has to be recalculated for each person. For example, the person shown as (1 cous 3 rem) to you on the above chart, is (1 cous 2 rem) to your mother, and (1 cous 4 rem) to your children. On the genealogy family pages, I show first and second cousins in relation to the main line. If you want to know the “removes”, you have to know your generation number, and their generation number. Rita and I, our brothers and sisters, and first cousins, are Gen 1. Our parents are Gen 2, and our children are Gen 0. On each family page, I show the Generation Number of the main ancestor.
Starting with the parents on each page, take their generation number and subtract 2, then subtract your generation number. That gives the number of “greats” for the grandparent. For their children, this is also the same number of “greats” for your aunts and uncles. For first cousins, this same number is the number “removed”. For second cousins, the number of removes is one less.
A note on dates.
As
you go back to earlier ancestors, you will notice a lot of dates in the form “3
Feb 1697/98”. This does not mean that we are uncertain of the date.
Britain changed from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar in September 1752,
about 170 years after most of Europe had done so. At that time they were
11 days off, so they skipped directly from 2 Sep to 13 Sep 1752. At the
same time, they standardized the New Year. Prior to 1752, some people
started the year on January first, but most started with Spring, using 25
Mar as New Year's Day. When we list something as 3 Feb 1698/97 it means
that it would have been recorded by them as 1697, but today would be seen as
1698. This affects everything prior to 1752, but only between 1 Jan and 24
Mar.