Genealogy report explanations

Family group reports

This gives the most detailed information of the reports that are currently available, but is limited to the chosen person, their spouse(s) and any children. The items provided for all people are dates and places of birth, baptism, death and burial. In addition the date and place of marraige, and the parents names are provided for the adults.

Ahnentafels

Ahnentafel is German, and literally means 'ancestor table'. It is a common way of numbering the ancestors of a given person. The chosen person is assigned the number 1. Their father is then number 2, and their mother number 3. This pattern continues, so that for any person in the ahnentafel at number N, their father is number 2N and their mother 2N+1. It is also worth noting that other than the initial person at number 1, all even numbers are male and all odd numbers are female.

Pedigree reports

A pedigree report is another way of viewing the information that is presented in an ahnentafel. Notice that the numbers are the same as in the ahnentafel. The advantage of the pedigree is that it gives a simpler view of the relationships. It's disadvantage is that it takes a lot more space to do so, especially as the number of generations increase. It is also simpler to add aditional information such as dates and places to an ahnentafel.

Descendency charts

A descendency chart is an easy to view representation of the ancestors and relatives of an individual. It's concise format not only allows a large amount of information to be displayed, but the heirarchical structure permits relationships across several generations to be easily viewed.

All reports

There are two common elements that run throughout each of the report types:

Every person's name is a link that will generate a new report of the same type centred around them
Common colours of blue for male, pink for female, and grey for unknown are used where appropriate