Terminology

The “Root Family” of this Family Tree is Norman and Marian Barton.

“Ancestors” are the parents Norman and Marian Barton, and their parents, and their parents etc. They are people that contributed DNA to Norman and Marian Barton. Brothers and sisters of Ancestors do not contribute DNA to Norman and Marian Barton but have shared Ancestors so share some of their DNA.

The “Target Audience” of this Family Tree are the grandchildren of Norman and Marian Barton (of which the author is one). All generational names assigned to Ancestors are relative to the Target Audience, e.g. Norman and Marian Barton are Grandparents, their parents are 1 x Great Grandparents, etc etc. “Descendants” of Ancestors (who are not themselves Ancestors) are not given generational names (e.g. Great Uncle, Great Aunt twice removed etc etc) as that can get too confusing and has no real interest at several generations above the Target Audience.

The Family Tree is organised around families. The Family Tree works back through time from the Root Family following their Ancestors. Each family of an Ancestor up the tree from the Root Family is referred to as an “Ancestor Family“.

Each Ancestror generation up the tree is allocated a “Generation Number“, 0 for Norman and Marian Barton (the Grandparents), 1 for their parents (the 1 x Great Grandparents), 2 for their grandparents (the 2 x Great Grandparents), etc

Within each Ancestor generation the Ancestor families are given a “Generation Ancestor Family Number” to identify that Ancestor family within that generation, from left to right, existing Ancestor surname before new Ancestor surname (usually male before female, but can be female first if Ancestor is illegitimate and takes mother’s surname).

The number of Ancestor families expands exponentially up the tree, 1 family for generation 0, 2 families for generation 1, 4 families for generation 2, 8 families for generation 3, 16 families for generation 4 etc.

In each generation half the Ancestor families have the same surname as the previous generation, and half have brand new surnames. When a new Ancestor surname appears that is given an “Ancestor Family Name Rank” of #1, their parents of the same surname have an Ancestor Family Name Rank of #2 etc, e.g. “Barton #1”, “Barton #2” etc. The Ancestor Family Name Ranks provide the roots of sub-trees which group together non-ancestor descendants.

Sometimes the same surname appears in the tree but from a different family (eg. there may be several Smith or Brown families). To distinguish these they are given a “Ancestor Family Name Qualifier“, ie. Smith (A), Smith (B) etc. It is always possible that these distinct families with the same surname do stem from the same common ancestor somewhere up the tree.

All of the above can be disrupted by an ancestor that is illegitimate. For illegitimate births the father is usually not given on birth certificate or baptism record, and the child takes the mother’s surname. Sometimes the father can be deduced with reasonable accuracy, for example an illegitimate child is sometimes given a middle name that is the surname of the unnamed father, or if the mother marries soon afterwards then the husband is likely the father, also censuses and subsequent certificates often list the father or grandfather of the illegitimate child, but it cannot be 100% certain. The illegitimate child may retain the mother’s surname or change to using the mother’s future husband’s surname. If the father cannot be identified then the paternal ancestor and all previous ancestors in that branch are lost. There can also be marriages between first cousins in which case there are common grandparents, which means there will be one ancestor family less (and all their ancestors).

Each Ancestor Family can have multiple “Descendant Families” (one for each child of the Ancestor Family that is not itself an Ancestor), these are allocated “Descendant Family Identifiers” (using letters as opposed to numbers) in order of date of birth. Descendant Families can themselves have Descendants (which will always be Descendant Families) and these are assigned Descendant Family Identifiers in turn, relative to the Descendant Family above them in the tree.

A decision has been taken to only document Descendant Families that are from male children, so have the ancestor surname, these are referred to as “Sibling Families“. This is to reduce the amount of research, even though in DNA terms they have the same worth as female children. Descendant Families for female children are referred to as “External Families“. External Families may be documented if their stories are interesting or if the descendant has illegitimate children that take her ancestor surname or lead to relatives discovered from social media or genealogy groups.

Families that provide spouses for Descendants are referred to as “Inlaw Families” and are never documented, unless they are exceptionally interesting.

The Generation Numbers, Generation Ancestor Family Numbers and Descendant Family Identifiers are concatenated together into a “Family Identifier” that uniquely identifies a family within the family tree documentation. So an Ancestor Family could have the identifier “3_4” which means Generation 3 (3 x Great Grandparents), Generation Ancestor Family 4 in that generation and a Descendant Family from that Ancestor Family could have the identifier “3_4_A_B_A” meaning Generation 3, Generation Ancestor Family 4, Descendant Family A, Descendant Family B, Descendant Family A.

Aims

There are several aims

• Find the Ancestor Families of Norman and Marian Barton, this includes all that died in the “certificated” era (from 1837 to present day), meaning oldest ancestors will be born around 1775 to 1800. Ancestor Families prior to that may be included but only minimal information will be available as there were no certificates or census data.
• From each Ancestor Family also find their descendants to the present day, but only for the male descendants where the Ancestor Family surnames are preserved to find any living relatives with ancestor surnames. Some female descendants may be included if the family story is interesting, or if the descendant has illegitimate children that take her ancestor surname, or if the descendant results in a relative that also has family information on the internet that can be linked to. This will be done for the first family of the ancestor surname encountered up the tree, and maybe the second but is unlikely to be done for prior generations as the volume of information would become too much.
• A person that marries into a Descendant Family (where the descendant is not also an ancestor) will not have their family documented.
• For each Family being documented create a timeline of events to document the story of their lives.
• Gather information on the various places of importance for the relatives, as background “colour”.
• Link to external web sites that provide in depth information, e.g. for places or organisations associated with a family