Ahnentafel Charts

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 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:

1.you
2.your father
3.your mother
4.father's father (your grandfather)
5.father's mother (your grandmother)
6.mother's father (your grandfather)
7.mother's mother (your grandmother)
8.great-grandfather
9.great-grandmother
10.great-grandfather
11.great-grandmother
12.great-grandfather
13.great-grandmother
14.great-grandfather
15.great-grandmother

It's easy to follow when the numbers are labeled 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. Specifically for my mother:

1.Darlene Furlong
2.Gordon Furlong
3.Fanny Rumford
4.William Furlong
5.Mary Mills
6.Percy Rumford
7.Fanny Bennett
8.Peter Furlong
9.Ellen
10.Thomas Mills
11.Caroline
12.James M Rumford
13.Elizabeth Birch
14.George H Bennett
15.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.

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.