Preparing your Information

SORTING

All "electronic retrieval systems" (a fancy name for "not stored on paper") are only as good as the basic information put into them. Whatever anyone pretends during electronic sales-talk, the old maxim "Garbage In, Garbage Out" (GIGO) will always be true, and care in setting up your basic surname trees will pay huge dividends.

Because this system is so flexible you can literally start anywhere. However between the two extremes of sorted and unsorted input, there are obvious advantages in sorting it manually first.

With unsorted material, the only question is whether you have the physical space in which to sort it. If you haven't, then start with a box of unsorted information at one side of your keyboard, deal with each source in turn, and put the document you have finished with in another box at the other side.

If you already have a card index or similar, use this in its existing order, again putting the card index at one side of the machine, with the completed cards at the other.

In this way, if you have to stop, you know exactly where you have got to.
If you are sorting manual input, make a separate pile for every surname. As most documents will show more than one surname, the criterion is the surname of the oldest MALE person identified.

SEQUENCE OF INPUT

Apart from starting with the eldest male relative of a particular surname (which may only be your father or grandfather) the choice is yours. Dealing with small surname trees first gives you experience in cross-referencing - the biggest ones give more impressive results.

One thing to avoid is "digging and delving". Deal with each document completely, creating new surname trees as they arise, before starting with another. It is much easier with a word processor to switch between one tree and another, and check cross-references afterwards than it is to find something in a mass of documents that you have "left for now."
However, because you will produce a "first draft" to check, you can easily add any stray entries with your corrections.

NB. As you read from here on, you might find that there is something of an "information overload" - what I suggest is that you click here to open a 6 page printable document. Once you have started it printing, you can close that window to return here.

MARITAL STATES

There are seven possible situations that may result in the birth of a child, which require separate identification within a surname tree. These are:

1. One marriage only at a church or registry office, shown as
    " = m. (date of marriage) = "
2. Two or more legal marriages, shown by inserting (1), (2) etc. in front of the wife's name
3. Remarriage of a widow, with or without children from her previous marriage, shown by (W) after her name
4. A divorcee, with or without children, remarrying, shown by (div) after her name
5. An "extra-marital affair" where the father is known, shown by an entry " = ex-m = " in place of the marriage date
6. The illegitimate child of an unmarried/single female parent where the father's name is not known and the child is recorded at the time of birth under its mother's surname. In these cases it is only possible to record the child in the surname tree under the mother's name as "issue: (ill)"
7. A "common law" wife, where there is no official marriage date, shown by " = (clw) = "

RECORDING OF CHILDREN

Excluding illegitimate children in 6 above, all children are recorded once only under their father's surname. The exception to this rule is when a widow or divorcee with children remarries (see 3 below.)

The different situations in 1 to 7 above are dealt with as follows:

1. ONE MARRIAGE ONLY

This is (was?) the most common situation, and children are numbered [1] [2] etc in the order of their birth. Twins or triplets are recorded with the same birth number, and identified as A or B (and C.) This prevents confusion if at a later date you find two or three children with the same birth date.

2. TWO OR MORE MARRIAGES

As 1, but their number is prefixed by the number of the marriage i.e. [1/1] [1/2] [2/1] etc.

3. WIDOW REMARRYING

The remarriage of a widow with children often creates the problem of identifying children of the remarriage from step-siblings. Particularly if the new family consists of young children, it is often common usage to refer to all the children by the father's/stepfather's surname, and a reference to "our so-and-so" often means he/she is not "ours" at all.

While the widow's children should for completeness be recorded under her previous husband's surname, it is a great help in sorting out step- siblings to record them immediately under her own name at the time of making the marriage entry, so that their relationship is clearly visible. They retain their father's surname tree numbering, but the number is prefixed by the number of the widow's previous marriage e.g. [(1)1] [(1)2] etc.

4. DIVORCEE REMARRYING

The principle and practice are exactly the same as for 3, but there may be complications. While we are creating an accurate historical record, and are not concerned with morals, it is necessary to recognise the facts.
A "straight-forward" divorce where the situation is akin to 3 is dealt with in the same way using the same type of numbering. Even though the children's father may have legal custody and the children are living with him, they should be recorded under the wife's name as above, for later clarity.

5. EXTRA-MARITAL AFFAIR

Where a child results from an "extra-marital affair," and this is the cause of the divorce and the wife marries the child's father, either before or after the birth, the child becomes legitimate and is recorded under the father's (i.e. new husband's) name as in 2 above.

6. ILLEGITIMACY

Where, after the divorce and before the remarriage, the wife has a child between marriages and does not marry the father, it is illegitimate, in the same way as a child of an unmarried mother, and is recorded under the wife's name, its number being prefixed by " - / ". Thus if the wife had two children by her previous marriage and one between marriages these would be numbered [(1)1] [(1)2] and [- /3]. In any future research the hyphen means "the trail stops here." Very often in these situations the child assumes the new husband's surname with the identity problems in 3 above.

7. COMMON LAW WIFE

Because the couple acknowledge that they are living together as man and wife, for recording their children they are treated exactly as in 1 or 2 above. However, legally these children are still illegitimate, so it is necessary to record them as "issue: (ill)."

SURNAMES

1. Variations in the spelling of surnames are attributed to all sorts of reasons, but one of the main causes of confusion is not always recognised, particularly in the early stages of research. Before the middle of the 19th century not everyone was literate, and even those that were varied in their proficiency. A very common situation was that while everybody could say their name very few could spell it. Consequently the written version depended upon who wrote it down, whether they heard correctly, whether the person saying his/her name had a speech defect or spoke a different dialect. (Shakespeare is known to have spelt his own name 16 different ways!)

Thus Parish Register records would depend largely upon the priest or the clerk - as mentioned elsewhere, a forebear in our family is recorded as Thomas Gayle at his baptism, Thomas Gaill at his marriage, and Thomas Gale at his death.

Unless there is a proven non-related line with a different spelling the surname tree should be recorded under the present, or most common, way of spelling, with any variants shown on the first line underneath.

2. The system of cross-referencing can produce a situation where two or more people marry into unrelated branches of the same surname. For clarity it is obviously necessary to identify these separately. The simplest way is again to follow daily life practice where a family are often referred to as, say, the "Lynn" Websters to separate them from the "Henry" Websters. Because your Family History for ease of reference will be filed in strict alphabetical order, the "identifying" surname is put in brackets after the surname tree name e.g. Webster (Henry) followed by Webster (Lynn).

3. While the system is based on setting up a separate tree for every surname found, in practice there are some surnames which you have no intention (at present) of ever researching, and to set them up takes unnecessary time. The answer is to have at the front of your ring-binder an index of surnames, and where you do not want to start a tree record this on the index. If later you need to, you can always set up a surname tree then.

PERSONAL NUMBERS

There is no separate index of numbers; it is not necessary. The numbering system is built up by generations within each surname on a simple basis, and when used as a cross-reference, it is shown on the other tree in a standard format enclosed within square [  ] brackets.

The eldest male of the surname is always referred to as the Head. [H]

If this eldest male is known to have (had) brothers or sisters, then although his forename or any details about him are not known, the FATHER of these children is the Head and the eldest known male is numbered as his issue. (NOTE - If the cross-reference is to the head, because all trees start with a head there is no need to include the [H] and it is not shown in reference numbers.)

If he only married once, his children are numbered [1] [2] [3] in the order of their birth. Twins are given the same birth number and letter A and B i.e. [2A] [2B].

If he married more than once, his wives are numbered in front of their names by (1) (2) etc.

The children of multiple marriages are identified by adding the wife's number in front of their own, separated by an oblique stroke (forward slash) " / ", i.e. [1/2] is the second child of the first wife, [2/4] is the fourth child of the second wife.

Marriages are cross-referred to both surname trees, and for clarity the dates of birth, marriage and death are recorded on both trees. The marriage number is shown within the brackets i.e. [3(2)] is the second wife of the third child.

Thus after initially setting up a surname tree with what knowledge you have at the time, every child born or relative discovered later can be entered exactly where they belong without upsetting anything you have already done. Only when research discovers generations earlier than the head is it necessary to make any changes and these are insignificant.

If they involve only one or two generations, the new additions are entered in sequence starting with the new head who now becomes [H] The existing [H] is now given his correct number. If you feel it is worthwhile, turn up each cross-reference and add this number in front of the existing number.

If you have been lucky enough to find a link with someone else's work which adds a few generations earlier, the easiest way is to rename your existing surname tree as "Part 2" and create another tree with the same surname, called "Part 1", All you then need to do is to cross-refer the head of Part 2 to his place in Part 1. (see GENERATION LAYOUT)

It is MOST IMPORTANT to include the full stops (periods) to separate the generations, also the oblique strokes (forward slashes) / and the curved brackets ( ) as the following example shows:

[1.1] = the first child of the first child of the [H]

[1/1] = the first child of the first wife.

[1(1)] = the first wife of the first child.

[(1)1] = the first child of the wife's first marriage i.e. stepchildren in remarriage entries under the wife's name.

[11] = the eleventh child (not unusual - Queen Anne had 17!)

While you may think this looks complicated, on reflection you will realise that it is only expressing in numerical form our daily life references to relationships in words.

EXCEPTIONS

"There are exceptions to every rule" is probably true. However, with an electronic system, rules must be made for the possible exceptions. While the four basic rules (which appear in the Instructions which you get with your templates) and the numbering system cover every conceivable situation (no pun intended, but it is true both ways!) there are two situations which I should mention.

1. Where you find a person whom you know or think is a relative but you do not know where to put him/her in the surname tree, at the foot of the tree put a heading "WHO ARE THESE?" and make a standard basic entry, together with any other information, however slight, you may know about them.
2. The second situation is where your researches have led you to certain conclusions which are probably right, but about which you have some doubt. Against the person's entry put "(see Q1)" (or whatever the question number is), and again at the foot of the tree put another heading entitled "QUESTIONS". Type in the query.

This means that whenever you are searching away from home you have ALL the queries relating to that tree available and in view.

As stated at the outset, the whole system is designed to get you in a position to take your records with you in a manageable form when you go "out in the field". However, there is no reason at all as to why you should not take advantage of the power of today's word processors to get the best out of your "computing time" - for example, you need the cross- references to be displayed on your printed copy exactly as discussed previously so you can turn to the right page if you are away from the computer, but if your word-processor allows hyperlinks, then you can simply create a link so that when using it on your computer, if you click on the reference, you are automatically taken to the right page. You can use the hyperlink feature so that when you click on a name, it then takes you directly to the where the "biographical" information is stored on that particular person. You can use colour (perhaps to show direct lines of descent?); you can insert pictures into your document - the best way to do this is to insert a "thumbnail" image in the document itself linked to the file on your computer which stores the full picture. You can even insert links to sound and video files!

Please click one of the links below

Introduction
Getting Started with Family History
Family History on a Shoestring
The Suffolk System of Recording Family History
Preparing Your Information for Recording
Templates - download here
Useful Links to Genealogy Resources
Frequently Asked Questions
The Suffolk Family Tree Research (well, MY forebears!)

Back to the top of this page