Ancestral list

In family history research ( genealogy ), ancestral list refers to the information on the ancestors (ancestors) of a person in the form of a list. Compared to the genealogical table , the ancestor list records considerably more data and can clearly display many generations of ancestors . A distinction is made between the ancestral line and the ancestral line .

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Ancestry

The line of ancestors is a separate form of the list of ancestors, which is arranged according to generations, not alphabetically according to ancestors . In terms of structure and numbering, the line of ancestors follows the Kekule numbers : After the person (no. 1), the list is followed by their two parents (2,3), then the four grandparents (4,5,6,7), the eight great-grandparents and so on in an ascending line (see generational names ). This representation provides a good overview of all the ancestors of the same generation and the phylogenetic relationships of the various ancestral tribes .

Ancestral line

The ancestral line or the lineage is a line of descent that only leads through men: from a father to his legitimate son (male line). As a rule, the family name was also inherited in this line . A pedigrees in an ancestor list starts (genealogically even with a female test subject called) always with a matriarch who follow the father, the grandfather and so on. In male subjects, the ancestral line begins with the original progenitor . The ancestors are sorted alphabetically in a list.

The information about each person is written in the following order:

• family name
• First name (s), first name underlined
• Profession and status
• Service position, title and the like
• Acquisition and sale of house and property (if possible with the exact price and date)
• Tax benefits
• Place and date of birth
• First name (s) and family name of the spouse

Variants of the spelling of first and last names must be proven, if possible with the year of occurrence and the source . A distinction must be made whether it is a day of birth or baptism, a day of death or a funeral, a bid or a wedding .

Step flags are also to be listed in the alphabetical order of the family names with all important data, if possible with details of both parents, but without Kekule numbers . No person should be missing location and time information; if necessary, they must be calculated or estimated. In the case of calculated data (for example the year of birth from the age at death), the identifier “(err.)” Should be added (“calculated”). The indication of the creed is essential . It is usually sufficient to put the predominant religious affiliation in the ancestral list at the beginning and to note deviations for individual persons or entire ancestral lines. For women whose maiden name is unknown, the known dates are listed in conjunction with the man's dates. Illegitimate relationships are marked with "oo", otherwise treated like marital relationships, including the Kekule numbers.

Ancestral hose

An ancestral hose is a one-sided (mostly only in male sequence) leading, very far back line, without (or with only occasional, rather random and punctual) exploration or representation of side branches and married families. The scientific value of ancestral tubes is very low because of these properties.

Research methods

Every family history researcher starts at the very beginning, for example with questions to their own relatives, parents and grandparents , uncles and aunts . Most families now have a family register . The grandparents, if they are still alive, remember their own parents and grandparents, as they were called, where they lived, their jobs and their lives. If your own parents and grandparents have already died, important information and details can often be irretrievably lost. Perhaps an older relative will still remember. She is also often the last one who still knows who is shown in the old family photos. Such photos and other evidence or documents as well as the biographies or life pictures of the grandparents and great-grandparents or other relatives written by the family history researcher themselves are the basis for a later family chronicle .

In the meantime, the interest has long been awakened to learn something about generations further back. However, very few families already have extensive documents, such as an old ancestral passport . When researching his ancestors, the family history researcher works backwards from generation to generation. If, for example, it is known from the marriage certificate of the great-grandparents from 1892 that the parents of the great-grandmother were Agnes Leichsenring, Karl Heinz Leichsenring, Bauer in Reinsdorf bei Zwickau and Christine Wilhelmine born Heinze, then the birth entry of the great-grandmother can be found under the baptisms of this couple, for example in the baptismal register of Reinsdorf on October 18, 1864, then the marriage of her parents on 26 November 1857. in the maid carrying the respective fathers are in most cases the bride and groom specified. Now again first looking for baptism, then for marriage and so on.

However, this generation-wise stepping backwards in time soon runs into difficulties. For example, a groom could come from a different location, so his baptism could not be found in Reinsdorf. It is therefore necessary to look for the death entry in the death register . There is usually an age specification from which the year of birth can be calculated. This is mainly needed to find out the correct ancestor from several people with similar or the same name. If he was married several times, the mother can also be determined by comparing it with the stepmother's death dates .

At some point, family history research is a hobby that requires a special inclination and passionate work. If the family history researcher penetrates his research into the 17th and 16th centuries, then new and difficult problems arise and the dead point of research is reached more and more frequently. As the number of ancestors doubles in each generation, the picture expands from a personal list of ancestors to the local , social and population history of entire communities in which a particularly large number of ancestors were concentrated.

Not every entry in the church book or court register needs to be copied or depicted literally. However, every family history researcher must learn to write down all the essential information.

The further the research progresses, the greater the likelihood of an ancestral community with other genealogists, which can be found in the ancestral index of the German people .

Abort probability

The number of ancestors doubles in each generation, but depending on the sources and strength of research, only a part of them is known. The probability that someone from this sum of ancestors is unknown is almost 0.00 at the beginning of the 20th century (that is, all ancestors are known) and approaches 1.00 in all non- aristocratic classes and strata until around 1500 .

For the second half of the 17th century, a representative analysis of ancestral lists from the Central Office for German Personal and Family History in Leipzig showed the following dropout probabilities: rural population 0.31, urban population 0.28. Among the rural population, the lowest values ​​have nobility with 0.03 and pastors with 0.11. The highest values ​​(around 0.40) show mobile jobs in rural handicrafts and the “trained” in the country ( schoolmasters , administrators and so on), where greater migration distances are coupled with poor sources (see spatial mobility and marriage circle ).

The genealogist can contribute to the scientific informative value of his research if he not only follows particularly "interesting" families, but also pursues all lines in all strata and classes with the same strength.

Completeness of ancestral lists

The completeness of an ancestor list is characterized by the percentage of known ancestors in relation to the theoretically possible ancestors of the respective generation.

While the genealogist usually makes rapid progress in the first ancestral generations, and in a certain research phase the growth of ancestors even accelerates relatively, the effort in generations further back increases more and more because the ancestors are spread over a larger area and the sources are usually always becomes more difficult. This is a statistical determination that in individual cases (for example after overcoming a dead point with the great-grandparents) can apparently be different. In genealogy, too, the economic “law of decreasing growth” applies, that is, from a certain point onwards, more and more effort has to be made to find more ancestors. With the growing importance of genealogical results in social history and other branches, it would be useful to be more specific on this point. Unfortunately, genealogists have hardly given any information about the relationship between costs and ancestral growth.

In Saxony, ancestral lists of subjects born around 1940 with 6,000 - 7,000 non-noble different ancestors and a completeness of around 80% (i.e. around 800 people) in the tenth generation of ancestors are among the top achievements known so far. The following generation of genealogists might come up with lists of over 10,000 people in individual cases, i.e. a mass of data that has been made easier to cope with through the use of computers.

One should always endeavor to fill the gaps that are closest to the present and direct special efforts towards them. Ancestral tubes make little sense.

An experienced genealogist who, after days of research, finally succeeds in naming one of 200 as yet unknown ancestors in the tenth generation of ancestors, will ask himself whether the effort and result are still in the right relationship. Because our life is finite, the possible effort in genealogy is limited. And maybe it makes more sense to map a location for a local family book, to work on a problem systematically until it is published, or to bring your experiences to the home history and a genealogical association.

register

Ancestral lists are incomplete without a register (place register and register of special professions ). Each place must be clearly identified by specifying the district or the corresponding administrative unit; in the case of villages, the relationship to the nearest town is sufficient. It must be stated to which point in time the political structure used relates. Terms such as professions, field names and so on must be reproduced in their original form.

References

In the case of controversial cases and hidden sources, the sources must be labeled in such a way that further checks are possible. At the end there is information about the sources used, unless these are already mentioned in the corresponding text passages.

Backup and publication

To secure the data , ancestor lists should be printed out several times and archived in several copies at different locations and sent in two copies to the German Library . The Central Office for German Personal and Family History in Leipzig has an ancestral list collection of over 11,000 ancestral lists.