There is no more fascinating subject than in which a person may
become occupied than family genealogy, an examination into the history
of his ancestry. The study of human beings is an interesting one,
especially when they are the particular human beings from whom the
student has derived his existence, his character, his likes and
dislikes, and those elements which differentiate him from every other
human being and constitute him an entity with individuality.
A
large number of people are becoming increasingly interested in the
study of their ancestry. Persons everywhere are inquiring as to who were
their progenitors, when they came to America, where in this country
they settled, in what direction they followed the tide of migration as
it moved into new settlements in early days, what they accomplished in
business, in education, in public service, what place they occupied in
the development of the state and the nation, who their children were and
what became of them, and so on with many questions, the answers to
which are an engrossing study.
To begin finding information on the
family, printed family genealogy will be consulted. These can have
different numbering plans. One plan of numbering family genealogies most
often found is that adopted by the compiler of the Chapin Genealogy
where numbers are used, and by Mr. Waldo Lincoln in the Lincoln and the
Waldo family genealogy where letters are used. It may be described by
quoting from Mr. Lincoln's introduction to the Lincoln Genealogy as
follows:
"The earliest emigrant of the family, in this case Samuel
Lincoln, is lettered a, his children are lettered aa, ab, ac, etc. The
children of the oldest child are lettered aaa, aab, aac, etc., of the
second child aba, abb, abc, etc. and so on through each succeeding
generation, each descendant having as many letters as the generation to
which he belongs, and letters showing exactly his line of descent.
For
example, take the last name in this volume (Lincoln Genealogy),
Mordacai Abel Lincoln, adaaa bbcgb. For convenience in counting, a space
corresponding to a decimal point is left after the fifth and tenth
letters. There being ten letters, he belongs to the tenth generation and
is descended from ad, the fourth child of Samuel, a.
To look up
any of his ancestors in his family genealogy, it is only necessary to
leave off a sufficient number of letters and to turn to the person
indicated by those remaining without resorting to the index or the
intervening ancestors. For instance, to learn the record of his
great-grandfather, leave off the last three letters, cgb, and there is
left adaaa bb, which is the index letter of Thomas Lincoln. Take now the
index letters of President Lincoln, adaaa db, and it is clear he and
the aforesaid Thomas were own cousins, the first five letters showing
that they had the same grandfather.
In the case of children, to
save space, only the final letters are used and to obtain their full
index letters it is necessary to affix the final index letter of each
child to the index letters of the parent. For instance, see Deborah
Lincoln^ aabab, her oldest child, John, is that of his mother, aabab,
with the addition of his own letter, a> making his complete index
letters aabab ay.
