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Old 27-02-21, 01:43
tempomental tempomental is offline
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Hello,

I'm probably way overthinking this.

I would like to have one giant book of genealogy starting with me. In the past, I've done an ahtenafel starting with my father, and my mother has done a ton of work on her side of the family based on surnames.

I've also started on 8x great-grandparents and worked forward, but I don't want to do 256 separate anthologies, especially at the stage of research where I am right now.

What I'm thinking of doing is a combination of ahtenafel and Modified Register numbering, but I'm having a hard time getting my head around it. For example, I would be 1, my parents would be 2 and 3, and my paternal grandfather would be 4. His children would be 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, etc...

Surely someone has thought about this before and solved this problem, but for the life of me I can't seem to find anything. What are your thoughts?

Thanks in advance,
TM
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  #2  
Old 27-02-21, 06:59
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Janet Janet is offline
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Welcome to the forum, Tempomental!

Your question brought to mind one of my family's genealogy books when you said "one giant book of genealogy" because that's just what Bouton, Boughton and Farnam Families is.

I don't know if it helps at all, but you might want to consider the method adopted there. The book is available online, free of cost, at The Internet Archive. Click on the link below and see the first paragraph on page vi of the Introduction.

Bouton, Boughton and Farnam Families

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Last edited by Janet; 27-02-21 at 07:04. Reason: Marbles in mouth.
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Old 27-02-21, 09:31
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Phoenix Phoenix is offline
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At the end of the day, the system has to make sense to you. I am old enough to have used and abandoned many different numbering systems.

The one obvious problem with the system you suggest is that every direct ancestor can be described in two different ways. It would possibly be easier to list siblings, rather than children. Also, I don't have many families with more than nine children, but one ancestor had fourteen. Using letters provides compact flexibility. And when you suddenly discover a missing eldest child, it doesn't look quite so embarrassing.

My gut feeling would be to keep the system you already have for your father (possibly preceded with an F) and mirror that for your mother.

Unless you are extremely disciplined, the more likely you are to lose heart half way through, and have a system which is something and nothing.
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Old 27-02-21, 10:20
Olde Crone Olde Crone is offline
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I use ahnentafel and have stuck with it, after, like Phoenix, abandoning many other systems. I use letters too. It makes sense (to me) but I admit to needing a crib sheet for any but the most obvious. My complete tree is handwritten because I have never found a completely satisfactory way of putting all the information on line, so everything is in neat folders (haha) in ahnentafel order.

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