Genealogy Burrow

Alpha Couple

We are the Alpha Couple in charge of this Burrow. It's a rather large Burrow, but we hope you enjoy your time here.

NOTE I have temporarily pulled all of the genealogy documents from the web site. This was done in an attempt to clean up the presentation of this information in a meaningful way. None of the hyperlinks below will work until I finish my clean up. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Burrow Organization

We've organized the Burrow's documents into the following structure:

Burrow — General Area of the Den

Where you are now — the Genealogy Burrow.

However, you are welcome to stroll around to wherever your heart and curiosity take you. Enjoy your visit. You are always welcome!

Libraries — Category Structures

Our Burrow is divided into one or more Libraries. They allow us to organize various documents into broad categories.

We have one library for each major family line. Information is added to these lines as it is uncovered ... and, more to the point, as time permits.

We adopted the convention of keeping the Libraries by major family trees. That is, we find the oldest ancestor of a given family line (or at least, the oldest ancestor we care to track) and present all of their descendants in that family tree.

A note is in order, however. Because genealogy is dynamic — and these web pages are mostly static — we've made the decision to trim family trees of most of the people we know are living. That's because living people tend to get married, have children, remarry (and bring step children and former spouses into the picture), and all sorts of things. All these events change the genealogical record. And we don't feel like keeping the web site updated with this data.

So we've established 1950 as an "arbitrary" cutoff date, after which we normally "trim" the family tree. If a person was born or married after 1950, we list any dates we have on file at home as "[Private]" and then unmercifully trim their children from the Library. That keeps us from getting constant notes from the living telling us that so-and-so had another child or got remarried.

Sections — Subject Matter Groups

Libraries are divided into one or more Sections. They allow us to organize various documents by family groups.

Each Library has a minimum of two basic Sections, though they might have more: descendant lists and family group sheets.

Descendant Lists

Each Library contains one or more descendant lists, which also serve as an index into the family group sheets. Descendant lists begin with the root couple.

Each successive generation is listed below the root couple, using a numbering scheme that refers to their position in the generations. Although the list looks complicated at first glance, once you understand the pattern, you will find that it is quite readable.

The root couple is generation zero, their children are numbered 01, 02, 03, and so on. The children of the root couple's first child, for example, continue the scheme as 01.01, 01.02, and so on. Spouses are indicated by suffixing the descendant's number with "-sn" where n is the spouse number — for example -s1 is the first spouse, -s2 is the second spouse, and so on.

The list does get confusing, however, because the children of any given couple are always listed immediately following their parents. This means there can be large gaps between siblings (brothers and sisters), even though they have the same parents and belong to the same generation. The more children, grandchildren, and so on, that are listed between siblings, the larger the gap will be. A similar gap, between spouses, occurs if a particular individual was married more than once and if there are many descendants from the first marriage.

One thing to note about a descendant list like this is that it does not show the ancestral lines of those who marry into the main family line. These family lines, if known, will be shown in a branch descendant list following the main family descendant list.

Another thing to note is that it's possible, and very likely, that many surnames will appear in the descendant list. This is normal and occurs when a descendant daughter marries, then has children whose surname is that of her husband.

Family Group Sheets

Each Library contains one or more individual "family group sheets," which contain dates, places, notes, and other information of a genealogical nature. Family group sheets appear in the same order as shown in the descendant lists.

Family group sheets show genealogical data about a person and their spouse, if any, plus any children they might have. Each individual shows, if known, the person's birth date and place, marriage date and place, death date and place, and burial date and place. It sometimes also shows notes and other information.

Documents — Web Pages

We've collected a number of documents that deal with the family and in-laws of the Village Fox.

What Next?

Libraries are the next lower level in the Genealogy Burrow. As mentioned above, we've established a Library for each major family line. For now, we've setup the following Libraries: