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Identity Crisis Avoided

by Val Atkinson

Article ID: 12, First Published: October 2004

Imagine buying any book without contents (or chapter list) and numbered pages. If such a book existed it would be deficient no matter how expensive or magnificent it looked, because it would be pretty useless, suffering as it did from a purpose and identity crisis.

Think of your genealogy as a personal ‘Book of Life’, and ask yourself these questions:

Does it have purpose and identity?
Is it useful to other readers?

BASIC IDENTITY IN GENEALOGY IS:

‘Couple’ information via pedigree charts.
Family information via group sheets.

BASIC PURPOSE IS:

Intention to inform clearly, concisely, and in an orderly way.

NOW ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTION:

Is the presentation of my work like a millpond?(murky and vague)
Could a stranger understand it at a glance?
Could I hand it on as smoothly as the Olympic Torch?

TRUST ME WHEN I SAY:

‘Proper genealogists’ have a system that starts at the beginning.
‘Proper genealogists’ never ‘jump into the middle of a family’ and scatter them.
A good clear informative pedigree chart is the best springboard for successful research.
Group your people the way they lived: as families.

IDENTITY FROM PEDIGREES:

My reading brain is left/right, so for me, pedigree charts should read from left to right like a book, with each person numbered.

I made a beautiful chart to illustrate this, but the newsletter format wouldn’t accept it. RATS!

On the chart you and your spouse are ‘1’. Your father ‘2’, and your mother ‘3’.

As a team, your parents are 2/3, paternal grandparents are 4/5, maternal grandparents 6/7, and so on, making a total of sixteen family groups on the chart, with males always even numbers and females odd.

I have a huge chart I love to gloat over, but my daily working documents are small manageable four generation pedigree charts.

IDENTITY FROM FAMILY GROUPS:

Second essential is a good, clear, concise, compact and informative family group sheet, giving you birth, marriage, and death for mother, father, and children all on one sheet.

I’ve used the same type for over thirty years: a landscape sheet from the Latter Day Saint Family History Centres, which has space for all the details of parents and eleven children. I haven’t come across another style that says it all so successfully.

Each family group is linked to the pedigree chart (contents page) by the personal identifying number code for that couple.

With this system in place your genealogy is accessible and informative, with the makings of efficiency, purpose, identity, usefulness, and magnificence. It can be read like a book as an interesting story.

HOWEVER, IDENTITY ISN’T JUST WRITING AND FILING.

IDENTITY FROM PLACES:

Recently on the way to Durham County Hall I passed the sign saying:

‘WELCOME TO DURHAM THE LAND OF THE PRINCE BISHOPS’

I felt a lump in my throat because I am Durham born and bred even though the powers that be have messed my boundaries and told me I’m Tyne and Wear.

Once, this whole area was Durham, and the identity of the people of the ‘Land of the Prince Bishops’ can’t be obliterated by a change of name or boundary.

Watch your ancestors and their ‘places’, Like a hawk, and don’t let them escape into a black hole. Track them on census and map, and remember: We like to move about, and so did they!

IDENTITY FROM PEOPLE:

Years ago I was very gratified when my eight year old son suddenly became extremely interested in genealogy. He continually poured over the pedigree charts, and asked searching questions, but I couldn’t seem to give him the right answers. Eventually he said:

"I’m looking for the place where the people were monkeys. Miss Cook says we all started as monkeys, and I’m just wondering when our family changed into people!"

I was once talking to a friend who always referred to an ancestor as ‘Granny BROWN’. Since her given name wasn’t ‘Granny’, she wasn’t born with the surname ‘BROWN’, and there was no identity system via charts, she was a faceless, anonymous, displaced person.

Call your ancestors by their given names, and maiden names where appropriate. It’s sensible because that’s how they appear on charts, and it dignifies them. Allow them their identity and the emergence of their life’s pattern by giving them place in the family group. Allow them to pass on their heritage intact, and avoid stranding them as lone castaways on nameless islands.

Use your ‘notes’ section to fill in the personal little gaps of nicknames and pet names, and let me know if you ever find the place where your ancestors ‘changed from monkeys into people’!

WE AVOID GENEALOGY IDENTITY CRISES WHEN:

We have a simple and effective way of recording.
Our work is readily understood and passed on.
We know our places.
We know our people.
Using these four areas of genealogy identity also avoids a personal identity crisis, for how can we have identity without our families?

They are our magnificent genealogical ‘Olympic Torch’.

Hold it high and pass it on!