So I decided to create a blog about my genealogy, or more accurately about my nephew's genealogy, since I have traced his father's ancestry as well as that of my sister and I, and I wish to include all my research on my nephew's relatives in one location. I already have trees in various states of completion (or incompletion) but have decided to create a record of my nephew's genealogy that will be publicly visible regardless of what changes occur at any given commercial genealogy website, and will be fully typed up by me to a consistent format, as opposed to the many inconsistencies caused in most online trees by automatic merging of records and other member's trees etc. This introduction is intended to clarify the scope and intended format of the blog.
Who will I include?
I intend to include every one of my nephew's ancestors that I have identified, and all known descendants thereof, but only under strict conditions. Firstly any particular ancestor or blood relative of my nephew must be no longer living in order to have their details published on this blog. In the case of blood relatives who are not direct ancestors the entire line of descent from common ancestor to the individual concerned must consist of only relatives who are no longer living, which avoids needing to show 'private' or something similar in place of a living person's details, and avoids any living relative or ancestor having the details published of any child who predeceased them. For any recent death, or any death that occurs in the future, a period of six months will be observed from the date of death before the person has their post written and published (or their name and details added to a post, if a spouse), in order to allow a respectful amount of time and privacy to the grieving, and also to allow time to be able to verify the death to prevent mistaken publication based on unreliable information. I am also considering implementing a further rule for not publishing a post for any otherwise eligible deceased person who would be under a certain age if they were still alive, in order to respect the privacy of living people who lost a loved one at a young age, but at this stage I haven't made a decision on whether to implement this, or what age to use if I did. For the most part the blog will feature people who were born in the British Isles, or were descended from ancestors who were, since my nephew and I are British and have, to the best of my knowledge, exclusively British ancestry (though British in this context may extend to the Republic of Ireland, as well as the UK).
What data will be included?
For every ancestor and relative I intend to detail, where known, the full name of the individual, and details of their birth and death, as well as any marriages. These will mostly take the form of the birth, marriage and death index records for England and Wales, and mostly consist of the quarter the event took place, and the registration district the event occurred in. The quarters are March Quarter (Jan to Mar), June Quarter (Apr to Jun), September Quarter (Jul to Sep) and December Quarter (Oct to Dec). The registration districts varied a lot over time, and also varied a lot in terms of geographical size and population. The important thing to remember is that the registration district is usually named after the largest or most important place in that district, but is not restricted to just that precise location. As an example Highworth district in Wiltshire, which existed until March Q 1899, was named after the small town of Highworth, but also included the nearby railway town of Swindon. From June Q 1899 the district was named Swindon district, but included Highworth within in it, amongst other places. Just because a particular ancestor or relative may be shown as being born in Swindon district it therefore doesn't necessarily mean they were born in Swindon Town. I also intend to detail UK census information. Each ten yearly census is formatted slightly differently but the information can include a person's name, age, gender, relationship to the head of the household (often, but not always, they are a spouse, child or parent of the head), their birthplace, occupation, and sometimes details of a disability (albeit in rather vague and insensitive words to modern ears). I will include exact dates, places and other details for births, marriages and deaths, and for associated events such as a baptism, christening, burial or cremation, provided that I have that information in the first place, that the source of that information is publicly available (i.e. you could find it yourself without my blog, if you chose to research it) and that the source is one I consider to be reliable.
What format will this blog take?
I intend for each individual blog post to detail one direct ancestor (including a basic listing of their complete desecendants, excluding those still living as mentioned above). As the blog goes on I may also post updates or conjectures for a particular ancestor, relative or family, if the new information or conjecture is worth mentioning and meets the above rules. Any blog post I make will reference within the subject the ahnentafel number for the direct ancestor or relative who is the main individual featured, which should make searching for relevant posts easier once the blog gets quite large. I may occasionally also make blog posts about a specific online dataset or other genealogical subject that attracts my attention, without specifically referencing any particular ancestor or relative, so there may be the occasional post which doesn't have an ahnentafel number in the subject. The ahnentafel numbers will be the ones that specify the relationship of that person to my nephew, who for reference is my sister's son. My nephew therefore has ahnentafel number 1, his father is 2 and his mother (my sister) is 3. With every generation you double the ahnentafel number for an ancestor's father, and double it and add one for an ancestor's mother, so my own parents would be numbers 6 and 7 here, since they are my nephew's maternal grandparents, and his mother (my sister) is 3 so her number gets doubled for her (and my) father and doubled and one added for her (and my) mother. Every direct ancestor therefore has a unique ahnentafel number (and possibly more than one unique number if pedigree collapse (aka inbreeding) is found to have occurred amongst ancestors). Every one of my nephew's relatives can also have a uniquely derived number which use their common ancestor number (usually the male one of the pair) and a decimal point followed by the number of the child at each step of descent (i.e. numbered by birth). For example I would be 6.1 on here, since our common ancestors are my parents, numbered 6 and 7, and I take the smaller number then add a one to indicate I am number 6's eldest child. If I went on to have, say, 3 children, then the youngest of my children would be 6.13 on here, and so on for each sucessive generation. For more than 10 children I use X for the tenth child, Y and Z for the 11th and 12th and then A to W for the 13th to 35th children. I'm not envisaging finding anyone with more than 35 children (!) but I would then use lower case a to z if need be, allowing for up to 61 children! Anybody who has more than one possible ahnentafel number available to them will be identified firstly by the ancestor with the lowest ancestor number, and, if more than one descent from that ancestor is known, by the genealogically eldest line of descent (i.e. descent from eldest child would be shown in preference to a younger child at each step of descent).Twins and larger multiple births will admittedly be arbitrarily numbered by alphabetical order unless a birth order is somehow recorded in one or more of the sources used.
What sources will I use?
I will use a range of well know genealogical websites, and the websites of various archive and current newspapers etc, plus any other reliable sites that contain relevant information. I will provide links to all sources on each persons page and colour code them as follows:
Ordinary links (a brown colour) are for records and pages from websites that are freely accessible without payment (but in some cases you may need to sign up for a free subscription). Such pages currently include
FreeBMD (a free project to create a database of all England and Wales birth, marriage and death records from 1837 to 1983. Most births, marriages and deaths up to the fifties, and a few in the 60s to early 80s, will have a freeBMD link.)
Familysearch (the genealogical site of the Mormon church of the LDS. I will only link to records, not user submitted genealogies or trees, but even so the record transcriptions from this website should normally be backed up by a similar record from elsewhere, if possible. This site is especially useful for free transcripts of UK censuses.)
The GRO digitised index (a recent relaunch of the GRO's website for ordering birth, marriage and death certificates online. There are now searchable databases for births (1837 to 1916) and deaths (1837 to 1957), which contain new information that was previously unavailable unless you ordered the certificate, specifically all birth records list a mother's maiden name (or a - if an illegitimacy or the name was illegible) and all death records list an age of death (unless not recorded or illegible), which means that this site is extremely useful for people born up to 1911 or died up to the 1860s or so, and I have provided a link to this site wherever that is the case. In cases of infant mortality the quoted age shown on this database may actually have been in months, weeks, days etc rather than years, especially if the freeBMD shows a age of death of 0, 1 or 2. Unfortunately I can only make a link to the search interface, not to the specific record I am referencing, so you will need to search for it yourself if you wish to check it out. Also this site requires you to register for free to use it before you can search the databases).
Orange Links are links to another persons page on the blog, and are included on an individuals page for all spouses who are also ancestors or blood relatives, and for all children who are also in the blog. This will in time create a useful interface to navigate through the blog.
Green Links are links to records or pages on a website that requires payment of some sort to view it. Mostly this be will links to
ancestry.co.uk or
findmypast.co.uk, and will normally only be used to link to records that cannot be found elsewhere, or can only be found elsewhere in an inferior way (e.g. the alternative is only a free transcription without an original document, or is badly transcribed or scanned). You will need to pay for credits or a subscription on the relevant website to view the record in question, though on some occasions (often around dates like Mother's Day, Father's Day, Armistice Day and Xmas Day) a pay website may make some, or all, record sets free to search and/or free to view, so these links may work for non-paying visitors to that site on those rare occasions.
Pink Links are used to are used to provide a Google Maps reference for a geographic location, so clicking on them will take to you to that place on a map.
What if I make a mistake?
I will undoubtedly make mistakes at some stage(s) of this project, so if you do notice one then please do get in touch and let me know. I will endeavour to only detail the descendants of an ancestor once I have fully researched their whole line and checked every descendant for every key record, in an attempt to minimise the chances of error. I will only include people whose death I have evidence for (though in a very few cases this may be through the family or via social media, so I may not be able to provide citiation), or who I presume to be deceased due to them being born at an earlier date than the oldest known person currently alive in the world (i.e anyone who would be older than about 115 or so at any given time), but if I do accidentally include you, or a living ancestor or relative of yours, then please do get in touch and I will endeavour to remove the living person's details as soon as I can. If any of the information is conjecture or needs a caveat of some sort then I intend to mention that too, to avoid appearing to state anything as absolute fact if this is not the case. If you find that any link is broken, incorrectly colour coded, or sends you to the wrong record or location, or even a combination of these problems, then please do let me know. In the first instance the best way to get in touch with me is to write a comment underneath the page for the person you are interested in or offering a correction for, unless you wish to correspond with me about someone you believe should not be included as they are living, wish to discuss the details of a living relative mentioned in a linked source or record, or you yourself are a living blood relative and simply wish to get in touch to collaborate or discuss the page(s) of your immediate ancestor(s) and/or relatives(s), in which case feel free to contact me via email dj_webb18@yahoo.co.uk
