The Ahnentafel Chart
Another way of charting and organizing your ancestors
Pedigree charts are a very visual way to organize your relatives, but they take up alot of space. An ahnentafel chart can map out ancestors in a compact manner.
Genealogy is definitely the hobby of charts and tables. When you have possibly thousands of people to organize and connect, you are always on the lookout for a better way to keep everyone straight. The most common charts are the family group sheet, and the pedigree chart.
Ahnentafel charts are a good way to compact a sizable number of generations of ancestors in a fairly small space. These charts aren't full pedigrees, and only contain the ancestors of one root person.
There is nothing particularly clever or complicated about an ahnentafel chart, as it displays as a simple, numbered list of people. But on closer inspection, the numbers are a key to help you navigate your chart.
Here is a basic ahnentafel chart, showing 4 generations of your ancestors:
- you
- your father
- your mother
- father's father (your grandfather)
- father's mother (your grandmother)
- mother's father (your grandfather)
- mother's mother (your grandmother)
- great-grandfather
- great-grandmother
- great-grandfather
- great-grandmother
- great-grandfather
- great-grandmother
- great-grandfather
- great-grandmother
It's easy to follow when the numbers are labelled by relation like this, but it can be confusing when there are names and/or dates with each number. You may need to work with these charts for a while before the significance of each number become second nature to you. Here is the same number of people, from my own family tree.
- Darlene Furlong
- Gordon Furlong
- Fanny Rumford
- William Furlong
- Mary Mills
- Percy Rumford
- Fanny Bennett
- Peter Furlong
- Ellen
- Thomas Mills
- Caroline
- James M Rumford
- Elizabeth Birch
- George H Bennett
- Fanny Cope Church
If you choose to record a very large tree in this manner, you will have a very long list and it can be very easy to lose your place in terms of finding the relation with the root person at a glance. That is where the numbering comes in.
Any person's father is twice their own number, and their mother is twice plus 1. So in my example above, Percy Rumford's father is James Rumford and his mother is Elizabeth Birch. And the reverse holds true as well. You can find any person's child by dividing by 2. So Thomas Mills' child is Mary Mills. It may seem cumbersome, but if you use a chart like this frequently, the numbers and relations will come naturally as you read through the chart.
Because the numbering is important, you must maintain the sequence even if people are missing from your history. If I hadn't known who James M Rumford was, Elizabeth Birch would still be numbered 13, not 12. So when reading other ahnentafel charts, expect to find gaps in the numbering.
You can find a very good Ahnentafel example on this person's online family tree site, Bill Hughes Paternal Ahnentafel. He has 15 generations listed out, though keep in mind this is only his paternal line. So the numbering is not continuous as you read down the list. Using subtitles to break out the generation sections is very handy. Most genealogy programs will create ahnentafel charts for you.
Oh and in case you were interested, the name "ahnentafel" is German, and translates to mean "ancestor table". Another way to summarize your tree in a compact format is the Tiny Tafel report.
