Dollarhide System

Genealogists often adopt a numbering system to keep everyone straight in their database. Numbering Systems abound, but few allow the numbering of all people in a database. Some are very good for consistently numbering ancestors, while others are more adapated for numbering descendents. Few systems deal with collateral people in the family tree such as in-laws, unrelated marriages, etc. William Dollarhide proposed a system that seems to marry the strengths of a number of systems. His work and thoughts are documented at the Genealogy Bulletin archive site. Terry Cole has proposed some modifications that are useful with computer programs and genealogy databases.

Basics

Starting Person

First, a person is selected as the starting point. All people in the database related in any way to this person can be numbered using this system. The starting person is person 1.

Direct Ancestors

Using traditional ahnentafel or ancestry numbering, the starting person's father is person 2, their mother is person 3, paternal grandfather... person 4, paternal grandmother ...person 5, etc. Each person's father is double their own number; each person's mother is double plus 1. Unlike ahnentafel numbering, Dollarhide prescribes adding a decimal point and 0 to the number. This is a very important modification as we shall see. All direct ancestors have a number that ends in ".0". When presented with a list (or items labeled with the numbers), it is very easy to identify direct ancestors.

Below is a simple chart of direct ancestor numberings.

		Paternal grandfather 4.0
		Paternal grandmother 5.0
	Father 2.0
Starting Person 1.0
	Mother 3.0
		Maternal grandfather 6.0
		Maternal grandmother 7.0

Siblings

Dollarhide prescribes that siblings and half-siblings of direct ancestors are numbered using a .1, .2, .3, .4, etc. suffix, much like they would in a Henry numbering system. Thus all the (half-)siblings of person 3.0 are labeled 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, etc. They are numbered in birth order (or whatever the genealogists believes is the best order when birth order is not available). A modification Cole has made is to skip the .n label corresponding to the direct ancestor. This allows us to see the birth order position of the direct ancestor at a glance. For example, if your grandfather has two siblings, one older and one younger, the three of them are numbered 4.1, 4.0, and 4.3. You can easily see from the numbers that there are three siblings, and you can infer from the list the birth order (or the selected listing order) of each.

The entire set of siblings, including half siblings through each direct ancestor parent, receive numbers that have the person number of the direct ancestor. This makes it easy to identify these extended families.

It is not uncommon to run out of numbers in the .1, .2, ... .8, .9 series. In this case, we start with letters .A, .B, .C, .D, etc...

Below is a table showing an extended family of half sibings. We shall see how to number their parents that are not part of the direct ancestry in a moment.

Family of 25.0 with first husband. Half sister 12.1

Direct Ancestors 24.0 & 25.0 Family Older brother 12.2
Older sister 12.3
Direct Ancestor 12.0
Younger brother 12.5

Family of 24.0 with second wife. Half brother 12.6

Secondary Spouses

You will note in the above example, we did not have numbers for the spouses. Dollarhide prescribes denoting a non-direct ancestor spouse by a * suffix on the spouses number. If there is more than one marriage, use *1, *2, *3, etc., in order of the marriage (or whatever order the genealogist thinks best if this is not available). Cole has modified this system to skip the marriage number corresponding to a marriage of the two direct ancestors. This system applies to any marriage not of two direct ancestors. Thus we can number spouses of siblings (12.1*) or previous or subsequent spouses of direct ancestors. We have not yet described descendant numbering (next section) but we also number spouses of descendants in the same way.

25.0*1 married to 25.0 (divored or widowed)

24.0 married to 25.0 (divorced or widowed)

24.0 married to 24.0*2

Descendents

Dollarhide prescribed numbering descendent's as well as ancestors. Descendants are numbered by appending a new number to their already numbered parent. This again is much like the Henry numbering system. Thus descendent's of the starting person become 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc. Descendants of a sibling of a direct ancestor are 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, etc. This is applied as often as needed, so grandchildren of the starting person are 1.11, 1.12, 1.13 (children of 1.1) and 1.21, 1.22, 1.23 (children of 1.2). Note that some cousins have a nice property in that they have similar numbers using their common ancestor. Of course, cousins is a complex issue.

Examples

Below are some examples of how to decipher the numbers.

1.0	The root person.
1.A	The 10th birth order sibling (or half sibling) of the root person. (If this is the last sibling in the list, we know there are 10 childeren.)
3.0	The mother of the root person. (The father would be 2.0)
3.3	The third birth order sibling of the mother of the root person.
4.12	The 4 tells us that the person is related to the root person's paternal grandfather (who is 4.0). The ".1" says there is a first birth order sibling of the grandfather. And the last 2 tells us the person is the second child of this person.
6.0*1	The 6.0 tells us the person is related to the root person's great-grandfather. The *1 indicates the first spouse of this person, unrelated to the root person. (The related great-grandmother is numbers 7.0.)

Complications

Changing Direction

Using the methods above, it is possible to number all ancestors and spouses going backward. Additionally it is possible to begin going forward from any of the direct ancestors. This allows us to number lots of the common people in our databases. But what of mother's in law? Brothers and sisters of in-laws? Or even their descendants?

Dollarhide allows us to go backward in the family line (2.0 to 4.0), to go laterally in a family (4.1, 4.2, 4.3) and to start going down the family tree again (4.31, 4.32, 4.33). This change in direction from backward to forward seems fairly natural. Dollarhide prescribes that we can change direction in other way, too. When we change from sibling or descendancy back to ancestry, we use a "/" to show this. If we wish to start going backward from a certain spouse labeled person, 9.2*1, we can talk about his or her father as 9.2*1/2.0. We treat everything on the left of the "/" as person 1 and move backward. 9.2*1/3.0 is the mother of 9.2*1. The tree can continue backward and indeed forward using descendant numbering. This change of direction can be applied at any level of descendancy. One might think of it is a small tree that grows within the larger tree tree.

Temporary Assignments

Sometimes you just don't know the birth or marriage orders. In such cases, Cole has suggested to use a series x, y, z (or other "late alphabet" letters). This shows that we really don't know and encourages one to research and find out. It allows one to number some other relatives on the basis of the temporary number. Of course, if this gets out of hand you will find it not very useful. If it remains a long term assignment, it is probably best to simply number the item with best available guess and move forward.

Multiple Starting Persons

Another reason for multiple roots can be a goal of naming a set of siblings as root. This can be done by designating all siblings as 1.x. For example, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 for three brothers and sisters who will all be treated as root person. If the children do not have the same parents, one set is selected for the direct descendant line, and the other parents are labeled using secondary spouse names.

Multiple roots can also help us with a computer limitation when dealing with these lables. The further back you go, the longer the labels get. We can designate a new root to truncate an extremely deep ancestry numbering. Some computer databases have a limited number of characters available for custom identification or numbering. When you reach the limit, you must designate a person as a new root. This shortens the numbers again so they fit.

Using the Labels

It is possible to denote more than one starting point. You might want to do this for several different reasons. First, it might be desired to describe more than one set of people for whom no relationship can be exactly described (because they are related, or because the relationship cannot yet be described). In the case, we designate then person one but put a unique prefix to work for each, for example person 1 to your main tree, but person Z1 for a set of related people whom you eventually intend to find a precise relation as a fruit of research. Or two equally important trees could be described with designations A1 and B1 for root people. When people are related in some way to both root persons, you must choose between two possible labels, or you could at that point renumber everyone is one or the other trees (using the common person as the starting point).

These numbers must be assigned by hand into a customizable identification field. Some programs can display this number alongside names on the computer screen and in report.

The identification numbers are very useful to number computer files. They can be used to label reports (e.g. 12.0 Individual Full Name.pdf, 12.0 & 13.0 Family Group Full Names.pdf, 12.0 Pedigree Full Name.pdf, etc), to label picture files (12.0 Name (date) Place.jpg), and sources (15.0 Birth Certificate Name Issuer), etc. You cannot use the * character in the file name nor the separator (/) in many operating systems, so you have to device a substitute. Cole has recommended using o for * and - for / (just for file names).

These labels when used to prefix computer files give automatic grouping by person and family groups.

Last Modified 1/22/05 8:26 AM

Hide Tools

Site
Changes
Index
Search

User
Log In
Register