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Family Tree
Hand-in-hand with a collection of family photographs, goes a family tree to explain the relationships between the people in the photographs. I originally used a spreadsheet to deposit information because of it's expandability and universality, but the "Html" version created by the spreadsheet, to enable me to publish on the Web, was far too complicated, and time consuming to change, as more information became available.
I eventually drew up my own "html" table, with a block of data for each person, that expands automatically when new data is added. Links (text coloured blue) in the main table lead to additional tables for siblings, cousins, nephews and nieces and their descendants. I've also added links to images of birth, marriage, divorce, and death certificates, and other source documents, that open in a seperate window.
Arrangement of Data.
The tree leads from myself top left, through six generations (6 columns), to a column of 32 people (32 blocks high) on the right, with male ancestors level and their partners a data block below. I've coloured my father's side blue background (16 blocks high, top half), and mother's side pink background.(16 blocks high, bottom half). For the linked sibling trees I've reversed direction, placing the siblings on the left and placing generations of descendants to the right.
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Data Sources
This project started with a spreadsheet to make sense of the information in Dennis Bank's letters about the family, and identification of the people in a Coffin family photograph taken January 1890. Along the way I discovered the death of my own father in December 1999, and the centralised Births, Marriages and Deaths records for the UK since 1837.
That led to the UK census records, started in 1841, and recorded every 10 years. The information is released to the public after a gap of 100 years, with the latest release being the 1911 census.
Church Records prior to that, and in different countries, are being transcribed by commercial interests and will be available at a price, but right now, this process is just beginning and very few church registers have been done.
In Britain only the quarterly summary sheets of the BMD records have been transcribed for the searcheable database, to the extent that one has to order a photo of the register entry, printed onto a certificate, at 10 pounds each, to find the other names and exact dates on the register entry. Since there are multiple entries for similarly named people in any location and time frame, this can be an expensive business, buying certificates until the correct date or parents names match known facts.
Assuming an equal contribution from male and female ancestors, and with the quantity of ancestors doubling every generation back, I feel it's pointless going back more than five generations, when any one person, at that level, no matter how famous, is only contributing a thirty secondth of a person's genetic makeup. Put another way, you will have over a thousand relatively small contributions to your genetic makeup, from your one thousand and twenty four ancestors that existed ten generations ago.
To look at my tree, click here
"tree.htm"
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