Frequently Asked Questions [FAQ] for soc.genealogy.medieval and GEN-ROYAL
William Addams Reitwiesner
Summary:
This regular posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
and their answers about medieval genealogy. It should be read by anyone who
wishes to post to the soc.genealogy.medieval newsgroup or to the associated
mailing list, GEN-MEDIEVAL. The FAQ is currently available on the World
Wide Web at http://www.erols.com/wrei/faqs/medieval.html.
If you have any comments or additions or would like to suggest further
topics to be included, then please contact William Addams Reitwiesner
(wr...@erols.com).
Contributions by:
Stewart Baldwin, Pat Boren, Todd Farmerie, Bill Lemay, Chris
Pitt-Lewis, William Addams Reitwiesner, Josh Stevens, Don Stone
Copyright:
Copyright (c) 1999 by William Addams Reitwiesner. All rights reserved.
This document may be freely redistributed in its entirety without
modification provided that this copyright notice is not removed. It may not
be sold for profit or incorporated in commercial documents (e.g. published
for sale on CD-ROM, floppy disks, books, magazines or other print form)
without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Permission is
expressly granted for this document to be made available for file transfer
from installations offering unrestricted anonymous file transfer on the
Internet.
If this document is incorporated in a commercial document, a complimentary
copy should be sent to William Addams Reitwiesner (wr...@erols.com).
This document is provided AS IS without any express or implied warranty.
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Questions Discussed:
1. What is soc.genealogy.medieval?
2. How do I send messages to, subscribe to, unsubscribe from, or search
GEN-MEDIEVAL?
3. Basic newsgroup and mailing list "Netiquette"
4. Are there on-line sources of information?
5. How do I start tracing medieval ancestors?
6. What are the chances that I have royal ancestry?
7. Can I be descended from Charlemagne or William the Conqueror?
8. Who were the parents of X?
9. What are Ancestor Lists and how do I use them?
10. Can we discuss Biblical lines here?
11. Why do mythical people pop up here?
12. Glossary & Common Abbreviations
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1. What is soc.genealogy.medieval?
soc.genealogy.medieval is an unmoderated newsgroup for the discussion of
genealogy and family history among people researching individuals who lived
in medieval times. The primary focus of the group is likely to be on Europe
and neighboring regions, but postings about genealogy in other areas during
this time period are welcomed.
The mailing list associated with the soc.genealogy.medieval newsgroup is
GEN-MEDIEVAL. The newsgroup and mailing list are gated, i.e., all email
sent to the mailing list also appears as a posting in the newsgroup, and
all postings in the newsgroup (except those that originated with the
mailing list) are emailed to the mailing list. See question 2 for
information about subscribing to the mailing list.
All who have access to soc.genealogy.medieval or GEN-MEDIEVAL and are
interested in genealogy in the medieval period are are welcome to
participate.
Scope of the Group
The medieval period is loosely defined for the purposes of this group as
the period extending from the breakup of the (Western) Roman Empire until
the time public records (such as church, tax, and census records) relating
to the general population began to be kept. This period would extend
roughly from AD 500 to AD 1600, but these limits are not intended to
exclude related topics of discussion lying outside of these boundaries,
e.g., royal or noble genealogy in earlier time periods. A related mailing
list is the GEN-ROYAL list, and questions relating solely to royal
genealogy after about AD 1600 should be raised there.
The scope of the group reflects the different nature of genealogical
research in the medieval period. Vital records and census records are not
available for this period, and the researcher must rely instead on records
of inheritance of property or tenancy, heraldic visitations, monastic
charters, chronicles, onomastic evidence, and even numismatic evidence. The
group is intended to address all these various facets.
The group is open to anyone with an interest in genealogy in the time
period in question, including, but not limited to:
* royal and noble descents
* origins of American colonists
* feudal descent of property
* value of pre-historical sources (such as sagas)
* adoption of surnames and insignia by families
* source availability and reliability
* reviews and correction of published works.
Inappropriate Topics and Posts:
* Postings of a general historical or cultural nature which are
completely unrelated to medieval genealogy are not appropriate here.
For discussions of a non-genealogical nature, try instead
soc.history.medieval or perhaps soc.history.ancient.
* Advertising or selling of a product or service is not in general
regarded as acceptable. The announcement of a product or service and
its cost is acceptable.
We highly recommend "lurking"--reading messages without posting
anything--for a bit so you can get an idea of how people typically phrase
their postings and how to formulate good questions or comments. In other
words, "Lurk before you leap."
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2. How do I send messages to, subscribe to, unsubscribe from, or search
GEN-MEDIEVAL?
* To send a message to the GEN-MEDIEVAL mailing list, send it to
GEN-ME...@RootsWeb.com or GEN-MED...@RootsWeb.com.
* To subscribe to (or unsubscribe from) the GEN-MEDIEVAL mailing list,
send an email message to the appropriate request address at
RootsWeb.com, where the list is hosted using SmartList software.
To subscribe to GEN-MEDIEVAL, send the following message:
To: GEN-MEDIEVA...@RootsWeb.com
[if you want individual messages] OR
To: GEN-MEDIEVA...@RootsWeb.com
[if you want messages in a daily digest] OR
To: GEN-MEDIEVAL...@RootsWeb.com
[if you want messages in a non-mime digest] OR
To: GEN-MEDIEVA...@RootsWeb.com
[if you want only a daily index to messages]
Subject: [can be blank - it's ignored]
[Message:] subscribe
To unsubscribe, send the following message to the appropriate request
address:
[Message:] unsubscribe
When subscribing or unsubscribing, do not include any additional text
or signature. The SmartList software is picky about .sig lines.
* To change your subscription mode, you have to unsubscribe with the
old mode and then resubscribe with the new mode. For example, if you
are now getting individual messages and you want instead to get a
digest (sent out daily), send the message
unsubscribe
to GEN-MEDIEVA...@RootsWeb.com, and then send the message
subscribe
to GEN-MEDIEVA...@RootsWeb.com.
Similarly, there is no NOMAIL mode. To stop receiving messages from
GEN-MEDIEVAL for a while, you must unsubscribe and then later
resubscribe.
* To search recent message digests for a specific word, e.g., Llywelyn,
send the following message to the digest request address
GEN-MEDIEVA...@RootsWeb.com:
Subject: archive
[Message:] search Llywelyn volume97/*
This will search all 1997 digests of postings archived at RootsWeb.
You will get back a message with items like the following in it:
volume97/14:18: Re: Llywelyn ap Iorwerth ancestor table
volume97/14:50:Subject: Re: Llywelyn ap Iorwerth ancestor table, gen.
1-8
volume97/2:590:> If neither Owain nor Rhodri had
descendants....Llywelyn ap Iorwerth
volume97/2:599:> Llywelyn's daughters, one of whom was Angharad, who
marr. Maelgwyn
volume97/2:602:> claim through his mother Elen, dau. of Thomas ap
Llywelyn ap Owain.
To retrieve the digests containing these messages, send the following
to the digest request address GEN-MEDIEVA...@RootsWeb.com:
Subject: archive
[Message:] get volume97/2
get volume97/14
Llywelyn appears in lines 18 and 50 of 1997 digest 14 and in lines
590, 599, and 602 of 1997 digest 2.
Alternatively, you can search and retrieve individual messages. To
search up to 8000 recent individual messages, send the following to
the non-digest request address GEN-MEDIEVA...@RootsWeb.com:
Subject: archive
[Message:] search Llywelyn latest/*
To retrieve an individual message, e.g., the one numbered 34, send the
following to the non-digest request address
GEN-MEDIEVA...@RootsWeb.com:
Subject: archive
[Message:] get latest/34
Note that searching is case-sensitive.
More detailed information about searching is available at
http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/members/archives.html.
Alternatively, the archives of the mailing list (which is gated with
the newsgroup) can be searched at RootsWeb, as described in the
following excerpt of a recent message from Brian Leverich:
ONLINE: THE NEW SEARCH ENGINE SERVER
The new search engine server is now online and can operate at the
speed of a full T1 connection.
Courtesy of hacks by Karen Isaacson, you can search the archives of
any mailing list (except those withdrawn by the listowner), now with
nicer *formats* and *updated* to within the last 24 hours, at:
http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl
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3. Basic newsgroup and mailing list "Netiquette"
The netiquette for all newgroups in the soc.genealogy hierarchy is
essentially the same. We recommend you read the FAQ Basic Newsgroup and
Mailing List "Netiquette" for further details. It is posted periodically to
soc.genealogy.medieval.
One important etiquette issue is how to respond to soc.genealogy.medieval
or GEN-MEDIEVAL messages. Before you send off a reply, stop and ask
yourself "Who should see this reply?" If the reply is intended for the
poster of the original message only, be sure it is sent just to that person
and not to the group or list.
If you are replying to a message from GEN-MEDIEVAL:
* To respond only to the author of the message, use the simple reply
(to author) option.
* To respond to the list, use your mailing program's option to reply to
the author of a message and all recipients; if your mailing program
doesn't have this option, use the simple reply option and CC to
GEN-ME...@RootsWeb.com.
If you are replying to a message in soc.genealogy.medieval, your newsreader
should give you a choice of responding to the author or responding to the
group. If you want to respond to the group and the message has been
cross-posted to several groups, remove any irrelevant groups from the
Newsgroups: list (and the Followup-To: list, if any); if the message has no
genealogical content, remove soc.genealogy.medieval. Note that very few
messages are appropriate for cross-posting.
Unsolicited commercial (junk) email or postings are a problem for which
there is currently no ideal solution. Probably the best strategy at
present is to delete and then forget about them; for messages sent to the
GEN-MEDIEVAL list, responding to the author(s) and asking to be removed
from their list may actually give them a new email address and thus may
result in your getting more rather than less junk mail in the future. Some
mailing lists deal with junk mail by having a moderated list or accepting
messages only from list members. That is not an option for GEN-MEDIEVAL,
since it is gated with the newsgroup soc.genealogy.medieval, i.e., all
messages posted to the newsgroup are passed on to the list and all messages
sent to the list are posted in the newsgroup.
Other etiquette rules we wish to emphasize or that are unique for medieval
posts:
* Always include a descriptive subject line in your message. Make sure
it describes the main point of your message. Remember that many
readers use the subject line to decide if they should read your
message or not. "Need help" or "Genealogy" are not good subject lines.
* Also, if the focus of the discussion has changed from when the thread
began, please modify the subject line to indicate this.
* Please put *entire* names in UPPERCASE in the Subject line and
throughout your message. Many medieval people had no surnames or went
by nicknames. Seeing a name like IVAR THE BONELESS in caps helps
readers quickly determine which messages are of interest to them.
* Please keep the lines of your messages to under 70 characters. Long
lines will overflow when quoted by others and become very difficult to
read.
* Posts may be in any language but will probably be understood by the
largest audience if in English.
* All posters are encouraged to provide references for genealogical
information presented, and to present lineages in as condensed a
format as will still convey the necessary information.
One last point to remember concerning inappropriate behavior: our
newsgroup, in common with other newsgroups, has its share of people who
seek to disrupt the group collectively and/or its posters individually.
While we may not have an official policy as to how one should deal with
such disruptive behavior, we can suggest the following: DNFTEC. This stands
for "Do Not Feed The Energy Creature". An energy creature's favorite
feeding tactic is to try to hurt people's feelings or get them angry. The
Energy Creature can then feed off the pain and anger it has generated. Its
second favorite tactic is to hurt one person or the group's feelings while
gathering the sympathy of others. That way, when the injured party lashes
back, others will jump to the Energy Creature's defense. The Energy
Creature feeds off the attention and the negative energy generated by the
people fighting. Newsgroups will never be completely rid of such obnoxious,
offensive and ill-mannered beings, but much can be done to keep the
situation under control by remembering this simple formula: DNFTEC. If the
Energy Creature gets a response, it gets stronger. If it is ignored, it
will eventually weaken, wither and go away. Remember: do not to feed the
energy creatures.
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4. Are there on-line sources of information?
If you are using the World Wide Web (aka WWW, W3, Mosaic, Netscape, Lynx),
you can reach several pages related to medieval lineages. We do not vouch
for their contents. Their URLs:
* Descendants of Charlemagne
* http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/html/chl-enter.html
* German Nobility Database
* http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de//html/ww-person.html
* Royal Family Genealogy
* http://www.dcs.hull.ac.uk/public/genealogy/royal
* Royal Genealogies
* http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/~saw/royal/royalgen.html
* Medieval Pommeranians 1503-1588
* http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/html/parcham.html
* Ancestors of King Edward III of England and Phillipa of Hainault
* http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/edw3chrt.html
* Brigitte's Royal and Nobility Genealogy
* http://www.genealogy.com/brigitte/index.html
* Glossary of Royal/Noble Titles
* http://www.heraldica.org/topics/odegard/titlefaq.htm
* Unit for Prosopographical Research, Linacre College, Oxford, dir. by
Dr. Katherine S. B. Keats-Rohan
* http://www.linacre.ox.ac.uk/research/home.stm
* Lacy/de Lacy Pedigree
* http://www2.cy-net.net/~lacey/
* Genealogy of Homer Beers James
* http://www.tiac.net/users/pmcbride/genweb.html#james
* Medieval Ancestors of Paul McBride
* http://www.tiac.net/users/pmcbride/rfc/toc.htm
* NetSERF: The Internet Connections for Medieval Resources
* http://www.cua.edu/www/hist/netserf/home.htm
* Swedish Queens
* http://www.luth.se/luth/present/sweden/history/queens/
* Anders Berg's Medieval genealogy site
* http://www.algonet.se/~anderzb/genea/medieval/index.htm
* The FAQs for the alt.talk.royalty newsgroup
* http://www.heraldica.org/faqs/atrfaq.htm
* http://www.heraldica.org/faqs/britfaq.htm
* Arnaud C. Aurejac's site on French families
*
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/aurejac/genealog.htm#ac-toulouse
* Paul Theroff's files on German, Spanish, Provencal, English, and
French families
* http://www.genealogy.com/~brigitte/pther_e.html
* Genealogical resources in the Netherlands
* http://members.tripod.com/~westland/index.htm
* Esoteric studies in European Royal genealogy
* http://members.aol.com.eurostamm
* Medieval Scandinavia
* http://www.ringnett.no/home/bjornstad
* Jim Stevens' genealogy website
* http://www.gendex.com/users/jast
* Pomer family files
* http://www.genealogy.com/ged/pomer/index.html
* "Genealogical Dictionary of our Origins" (French Canadian site)
* http://www.cam.org/~beaur/dgo/intro-e.html
* J.H. Garner Genealogy Database
* http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/g/a/r/J-H-Garner/
* Rafal Prinke's home page
* http://hum.amu.edu.pl/~rafalp/novae.html
Some general genealogical pages have links to medieval compilations such as
the above, including:
* RAND Genealogy Club
* http://www.rand.org/personal/Genea
* ROOTS-L Resources: Royalty
* http://www.rootsweb.com/roots-l/royalty.html
* Cyndi's List of genealogy sites on the Internet -- Royalty and
Nobility
* http://www.CyndisList.com/royalty.htm
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5. How do I start tracing medieval ancestors?
To trace genealogical connections, step by step, generation by generation,
for a thousand years or more is not a trivial task.
For those of you with ancestors in 17th-century America: a quick look for
immigrant ancestors with noble or royal ancestry is often the fastest way
to acquire a long pedigree. Three books provide a good starting point:
* Faris, David. Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth- Century Colonists.
1996.
* Roberts, Gary Boyd. The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants to the
American Colonies or the U.S. 1993. Note the additions and corrections
given in NEXUS (NEHGS), May-Aug. 1996, vol. 13, pp. 124-130.
* Weis/Sheppard/Faris. Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists.
1992.
For those of you with ancestors in Britain (from the medieval period up to
the present): a good starting point is the set of three indices to
pedigrees in printed works and periodicals:
* Marshall, George W. The Genealogist's Guide. 4th ed. 1903, repr.
1973.
* Whitmore, John B. A Genealogical Guide: An Index to British Pedigrees
in Continuation of Marshall's Genealogist's Guide. 1953.
* Barrow, Geoffrey B. The Genealogist's Guide: An Index to Printed
British Pedigrees and Family Histories, 1950-1975, Being a Supplement
to G. W. Marshall's Genealogist's Guide and J. B. Whitmore's
Genealogical Guide. 1977.
The books in the first group above and most of the books or articles
referenced in the indices in the second group above are *secondary* sources
that give the author's opinion of what he found in *primary* sources, which
include:
* Legal primary documents:
o charters
o grants
o patents
o wills
o deeds
o contracts
o petitions
* And other primary sources:
o diaries
o letters
o annals of monasteries and abbeys
o contemporary narratives.
You may want to draw your own conclusions by studying the primary sources
first hand, which is recommended because none of these books (nor any
other) is error-free.
Primary sources vary in quality, accuracy, and completeness, too. So how
can you determine what sources are best/most accurate? By checking recent
genealogical publications and discussing it here in soc.genealogy.medieval.
The more you learn, the better you'll be able to draw your own conclusions
about accuracy and quality of source material.
Prepare for doing the genealogy by reading up on the history, geography,
and languages of time and place you intend to research; what you remember
(or think you remember) from school is almost certain to be inadequate.
Here are some of the secondary sources which have been cited with some
regularity by the participants in soc.genealogy.medieval:
* Cokayne, George Edward. The Complete Peerage. 2nd ed. 1910-1959 in 14
volumes, reprinted in photoreduced format in 6 volumes in 1987.
* Europaeische Stammtafeln. ed. Detlev Schwennicke. 1978-1995 in 19
volumes.
The soc.genealogy.medieval newsgroup does not have an official position on
any source. Individual participants can and do have strong views on the
quality of the information presented in these and other sources.
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6. What are the chances that I have royal ancestry?
In The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants, Roberts includes almost 350
colonial American immigrants with royal ancestry. These immigrants (pp.
xiv, ff.):
"left sizable, often huge, progenies...These 350 are a large
enough group so that living Americans with 50-100 colonial
immigrant ancestors in New England (or Long Island), in Quaker
(but not German or Scots-Irish) Pennsylvania, or in the Tidewater
South (but often not the Piedmont, Shenandoah Valley, or
mountainous 'backcountry') can expect to find a royally descended
forebear."
Of these 350 immigrants, 167 left ten or more descendants treated in the
Dictionary of American Biography. In the New England Historic Genealogical
Society newsletter NEXUS, June-September 1994, Roberts says (p. 104) that
100 million is very likely quite a conservative estimate of the number of
American descendants of these 167.
[Similar information is needed for other countries. Volunteers?]
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7. Can I be descended from Charlemagne or William the Conqueror?
If you are of European ancestry, yes, it is possible. Both Charlemagne and
William left progeny--sometimes illegitimate--who have descendants living
today.
In medieval Europe, illegitimacy had a more strictly legalistic
significance than today, relating to automatic inheritance under either
primogeniture or division of legacy. Many illegitimate lines are well known
and traced. William the Conqueror himself was known as William the Bastard,
not for his personality but for his birth "on the wrong side of the
blanket." Note, however, that the majority of descents from medieval
English monarchs are legitimate, not illegitimate.
Remember that "descended from" and "able to document a descent from" do not
mean the same thing. In the medieval period, most genealogical connections
went unrecorded, and in only a certain percentage of cases do the records
survive today. So, it is possible that you may be a descendant but unable
to prove it.
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8. Who were the parents of X?
The soc.genealogy.medieval newsgroup does not have an official position on
any lineage. Individual participants can and do have strong views on
medieval family lines. Consider this a forum to share and air our views and
the conclusions we've each drawn about these ancestries. We want a free
flow of information that allows each reader to take responsibility for
evaluating the information we share, pursuing the references cited therein
if appropriate.
While we all would like definite answers, the fact is that the surviving
evidence from the medieval period is sometimes very sketchy, and, in some
cases, the evidence is open to a number of incompatible interpretations.
The temptation is to consider medieval lineages as verified because they've
been around so long. In truth, some authors have made up connections or
have made unwarranted assumptions about parentage in an attempt to tie
families to royalty or nobility. For this reason, even long-accepted
genealogies should not be taken as correct without some investigation.
No genealogy can be "proved," but newsgroup discussion should help you to
rate lineages on a scale from very likely to very unlikely.
By all means, if you have anything to add to any discussions, we more than
welcome you and your opinions. Don't be intimidated by the on-line experts.
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9. What are Ancestor Lists and how do I use them?
Occasionally someone will post an Ancestor List (or Ahnenlist, or
Ahnenreihe) for a Medieval person. This will consist of a numbered list of
persons without any explanation of how the persons are related to each
other. The following explanation of the numbering scheme used in Ancestor
Lists is slightly modified from a message posted to the group by Stewart
Baldwin on 26 November 1998.
The idea of Ancestor Lists is simple. They provide a numbering system
whereby all of the known ancestors of a single individual can be listed in
such a way that no two different ancestors receive the same number, and
such that the numbers themselves are enough to deduce the claimed
relationships. An Ancestor List starts with the individual in question
(i.e., the person whose ancestors are to be traced) as number 1, for
example:
1. Charles II, king of Great Britain (1630-85).
The parents of that individual are then numbered as follows:
2. father of number 1, and
3. mother of number 1, or, in the example above:
2. Charles I, king of Great Britain (1600-49).
3. Henriette Marie, princess of France (1609-69).
The next generation (the four grandparents of individual number 1) are
numbered next:
4. father of number 2,
5. mother of number 2,
6. father of number 3, and
7. mother of number 3, i.e., in our example:
4. James VI of Scotland, I of England (1566-1625).
5. Anna of Denmark (1674-1619).
6. Henri IV, king of France and Navarre (1553-1610)
7. Maria de Medici (1575-1642).
The next generation (the eight great-grandparents of individual number 1)
then receive the next eight numbers (i.e., 8 through 15). So, for example,
Mary, Queen of Scots, mother of James VI & I, would receive the number 9.
This continues for as far as information is available, with the 16 2nd
great-grandparents having the 16 numbers from 16 to 31, the next generation
having the 32 numbers from 32 to 63, and so forth.
If an ancestor is unknown, then the number that would have been used for
that ancestor remains blank. This results in unused numbers for the earlier
generations also. That is normal in ancestor lists, for even the best
documented families will eventually reach a point where the information is
unknown. If, at some future date, the information becomes known, the
relevant numbers are still available, and can be used to fill in the data
in its proper order.
As long as no ancestors are duplicated, things work out exactly as above.
However, anyone who traces their ancestry far enough back is going to reach
a point where they are descended from the same person in two or more
different ways. In this case the ancestor in question will have two or more
ancestor numbers. The first time that this happens in the ancestor list of
Charles II is with his third-great- grandmother Margaret Tudor, who is
ancestor number 35 AND 37 for Charles II. (Although both of the ancestor
numbers occur in the same generation in this particular duplication, that
will not always be the case.) In this case, the standard practice is to
introduce a cross-reference, as follows:
34. Archibald Douglas, earl of Angus (ca. 1489-1557)
35. Margaret Tudor (1489-1541).
36. James IV, king of Scots (1473-1513).
37. Margaret Tudor (same as number 35).
Here, 34 and 36 were not duplicated, because Margaret had children by two
different marriages, both of whom were ancestors of Charles II. It is the
general custom that, whenever such duplications occur, the "main" entry
will be under the smallest number, and larger numbers are cross-referenced
to the smaller one. It is considered bad form to enter earlier generations
under both numbers, so Henry VII (Margaret's father) would be listed only
under number 70, and the number 74 (along with all of the corresponding
duplicated numbers in the earlier generations) would remain unused. People
who ignore this rule might find that they are wasting vast amounts of paper
on duplicate information when they print out such a list.
One nice property of this numbering system is that there are simple
arithmetic rules which allow you to determine the relationship of the
individuals in the list:
* With the exception of the individual numbered 1, who can be either
male or female, even numbered individuals are male, and odd numbered
individuals are female.
* For any ancestor in the list, the ancestor number of that person's
father can be determined by multiplying by 2 (i.e., the father of
ancestor number n has a number of 2n).
* For any ancestor in the list, the ancestor number of that person's
mother can be determined by multiplying by 2 and then adding 1 (i.e.,
the mother of ancestor number n has a number of 2n+1).
* For any ancestor in the list, the number of the child through whom
the ancestry is traced can be found by dividing by 2, and then
discarding the remainder, if any (i.e., the child of ancestor number n
will have number either n/2 or (n-1)/2, whichever one is a whole
number). (If there are cross-references for that ancestor, then other
children can be found by using the cross-referenced numbers in the
same way).
To see how this can be used, suppose we take the ancestor number 54321.
Dividing by two (27160.5) and then discarding the remainder gives 27160.
Repeating this process over and over then gives, 13580, 6790, 3395, 1697,
848, 424, 212, 106, 53, 26, 13, 6, 3, 1. Using the even-odd rule described
above, we get:
* 54321 (female)
* 27160 (male)
* 13580 (male)
* 6790 (male)
* 3395 (female)
* 1697 (female)
* 848 (male)
* 424 (male)
* 212 (male)
* 106 (male)
* 53 (female)
* 26 (male)
* 13 (female)
* 6 (male)
* 3 (female)
* 1 (either male or female, depending on the starting individual)
Thus, the individual numbered 54321 will be the 13th great-grandmother of
the person numbered 1, with the above list showing exactly which
intervening generations are male, and which are female.
In the opposite direction, if you wanted to determine the ancestor number
of Charles II's mother's father's father's mother's mother, you would start
with 1, multiply by two and add one to get 3 (mother of 1), multiply by 2
to get 6 (father of 3), and so forth, getting 12, 25, and 51, the number of
the ancestor in question (Marguerite de Lorraine in the case of Charles
II).
Note: An Ancestor List is sometimes called an Ancestor Table (or
Ahnentafel). Strictly speaking, an Ancestor Table is in tabular form:
|----- 4 -------
|
|----- 2 -----|
| |
| |----- 5 -------
|
----- 1 -----|
|
| |----- 6 -------
| |
|----- 3 -----|
|
|----- 7 -------
But the numbering scheme used in Ancestor Tables is the same as the one
used in Ancestor Lists.
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10. Can we discuss Biblical lines here?
This is not the proper forum for discussing the Biblical connections of
ancient lines. They are off-topic mostly because they're outside the
medieval time period (500 AD to 1600 AD). While mention of the Biblical
connections is permissable, discussion should focus on the medieval
portions of these lines.
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11. Why do mythical and semi-mythical people pop up here?
There are several reasons for this. One is that many pedigrees have been
created showing the descent of royalty from important people, including
mythical gods and goddesses. Another is the tendency over time to amplify
the accomplishments of a real historical person, producing a semi-mythical
figure. Examples of this are Charlemagne, El Cid, and so on.
Mythical people will inevitably be discussed here--mainly to help us
understand where the myth ends and history begins, but also because myths
tell us something about the people that believed in them.
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12. Glossary & Common Abbreviations
Also see Glossary of Royal/Noble Titles at
http://www.heraldica.org/topics/odegard/titlefaq.htm.
Definitions:
royalty
the rulers (princes) and their near families.
nobility
families of high and hereditary rank. Often descended from younger
sons of kings. Often the only families which royalty would marry into.
In the English system today, the head of a noble family is a duke,
marquess, earl, viscount, or baron.
gentry
remaining families of hereditary rank. In the English system, the
baronets and the knights (though knighthood is personal and not
hereditary).
squire
[British only] a freeman without hereditary title who owns (rural)
land, especially the most important free landowner in a district.
Abbreviations:
One of the most common abbreviations in medieval genealogy is "sp", or
"s.p.", which stands for either the Latin "sine prole", or the French "sans
posterite". Both mean the same thing, "without issue" (that is, without
children). With "s.p." as the base, many more abbreviations can be built:
* d.s.p. == Latin "decessit sine prole" or French "decede/decedee sans
posterite", died without issue.
* o.s.p. == Latin, "obiit sine prole," died without issue.
* v.p. == Latin, "vita patris," during the life of the father.
* d.v.p. == "died vp," died before his (or her) father.
* o.v.p. == "obiit vita patris", died before his (or her) father.
* v.m. == Latin, "vita matris", during the life of the mother. Usually
implies that the mother was an heiress of some sort.
* o.v.m. == "obiit vita matris", died before his (or her) mother.
* s.p.l. == "sans posterite legitime", without legitimate issue. Note
that "s.p." usually implies "without any issue either legitimate or
illegitimate", whereas "s.p.l." usually implies "without legitimate
issue but with illegitimate issue".
* s.p.m. == "sine prole masculina", without any sons. This usually
implies "with daughters".
A number of these "s.p." abbreviations can be strung together to provide a
fairly precise description of the person's relationships at his or her
death, such as:
* d.s.p.m.l. == died without legitimate sons.
* d.v.m.s.p. == died during the lifetime of his (or her) mother leaving
no children.
* d.v.p.s.p.m.l. == died during the lifetime of his (or her) father
leaving no legitimate sons.
Other abbreviations commonly found in Medieval genealogy include:
* A.M. == anno mundi (year of the world, according to various dates for
Creation)
* B.C.E. == before common era (long way to write BC)
* C.E. == common era (politically correct for AD)
* D.F.A. == Descent from Antiquity (direct descent from person living
before AD 476)
* fl. == floruit (flourished; did his deeds)
* i.p.m. == "inquisition post mortem," performed when anyone holding
land directly under the king (or land under a minor, who held under
the king) died. Its purpose was to determine what land was held, who
the heir was, and whether that heir was a minor to ensure that the
king derived the various benefits available from guardianship. It is
useful in providing death dates (sometimes precise, sometimes
approximate like older than 21 or 40 years), who was in possession of
land at a specific date, who the deceased was holding his land under,
and who was holding under the deceased.
Of course the standard abbreviations are used here also, such as:
* abt. == about
* aft. == after
* b. == born
* bef. == before
* c. or ca. == circa (about)
* d. == died
* dau. == daughter
* m. == married
* m1. == married as his first wife (or as her first husband).
* MS or ms. == manuscript
* MSS or mss. == manuscripts (note plural)
* occ. == occurs in sources
* r. == ruled
* unk. == unknown
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soc.genealogy.medieval FAQ / June 1999 / wr...@erols.com