In the Climb Our Family Tree section of this website, our family tree is stored in a database, MySQL if you must know. That endows The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding (TNG) software, integrated into this website, with superpowers—queries! Queries allow us to search the family tree for specific information that would be near impossible to find otherwise. TNG uses these queries to display reports.
We’ve provided quite a few pre-built reports at Climb Our Family Tree > Info > Reports. With these reports, you can quickly find all the immigrants, twins, or war veterans in the family tree, and much more.
Hint, hint … we have provided several reports that you can use if you are interested in taking on a project to research our family tree or correct obvious mistakes in its information. These reports are the ones whose names start with Help Correct … or Help Research ….
So what does a MySQL query look like? The Twins, Triplets, Etc. report runs this MySQL query:
SELECT c.familyID, p.personID, p.lastname, p.firstname, p.birthdate, p.birthplace, p.living, COUNT( c.familyID ) AS Number, p.gedcom
FROM tng_children AS c
INNER JOIN tng_people AS p ON p.personID = c.personID
INNER JOIN tng_children AS c2 ON c2.familyID = c.familyID
INNER JOIN tng_people AS p2 ON p2.personID = c2.personID
WHERE (
p2.birthdatetr = p.birthdatetr
OR p2.birthdatetr = DATE_ADD( p.birthdatetr, INTERVAL 1
DAY )
OR p2.birthdatetr = DATE_SUB( p.birthdatetr, INTERVAL 1
DAY )
)
AND YEAR( p.birthdatetr ) <>0
AND MONTH( p.birthdatetr ) <>0
AND DAYOFMONTH( p.birthdatetr ) <>0
GROUP BY c.familyID, p.personID, p.birthdatetr
HAVING COUNT( c2.familyID ) >=2
ORDER BY p.lastname, c.familyID, p.birthdatetr
That basically just says to list all the siblings in the tree that share the same birthday with one of their siblings, with some extra checking thrown in to ensure the birthdate is valid, and the list is then ordered by last name, then family ID, and then birthdate so the siblings are grouped together in the list.
We also have many other reports that are used by the family tree administrator to manage the family tree (e.g. finding typos and invalid characters in names, dates, and places; ensuring living family members are indeed listed as Living, ensuring recently deceased family members are listed as Private, and countless other tedious tasks). Consider yourself spared.
Many of these reports were generated by the TNG Community and can be found here.
If you have an idea for a report, let us know, and we’ll see if we can find or create the needed query.
Spend even a little time in the world of genealogy and you will encounter removed used to describe the relationship between two cousins; for example:
First Cousin Once Removed
Fourth Cousin 4 Times (4x) Removed
The degree of the cousin relationship (e.g. First Cousin, Fourth Cousin in the examples above) is determined by the cousin that is closest in relationship to (fewest generations below) the Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) of the two cousins.
The removal of the cousin relationship (e.g. Once Removed, 4 Times Removed in the examples above) is the number of generations the two cousins are apart. So, for example, if the closest cousin is 3 generations below the MRCA, and the other cousin is 4 generations below the MRCA, then they are Second Cousins Once Removed:
Closest cousin is 3 generations below the MCRA → Second Cousins
Below is a handy and well-formatted table of consanguinity from Graham Chamberlain:
Look up the relationship of the first person to the MCRA in row 0. Look up the relationship of the second person to the MCRA in column 0. The relationship of these two cousins is then found at the intersection of the column for the first person and the row for the second person. For example:
Great-grandson to MCRA → Row 0, Column 3
2nd great-granddaughter to MCRA → Column 0, Row 4
Intersection at Column 3, Row 4 → Second Cousin Once Removed
You can learn even more about cousins from Wikipedia.
With online document repositories, record indexing, and the oh-so-simple-looking Search box, we grow accustomed to being taken magically to just the record we are looking for. Another birth date, another ancestor for the family tree. It is oh so simple.
Go ahead, you know you’re feeling lucky.
But in this simplicity, we run the risk of developing tunnel vision and missing related records, missing much needed historical context, and well, missing the journey itself.
When the Search takes you to the record you asked for, take the time to look up and look down in the document to get a lay of the land. In a census, read the prior 5 pages, and the following 5 pages. You may be pleasantly surprised with what you find. We’ve lost count of how many times we have been. What leads us to …
Q. Why can’t I see the information for some of the individuals in the family tree?
A. There are two categories of individuals hidden from view in the family tree—those Living and those Private.
Individuals are marked Living by the software based on their death date. However, there are many individuals in the tree missing their birth or death dates, or both. In that case, these rules are applied:
(a) if their record does not contain both birth and death dates, they are assumed to be Living,
(b) if their record contains a birth date, but not a death date, they are assumed Deceased if older than 110 years of age based on their birth date.
For individuals clearly Deceased (they appear in the tree more than several generations ago) but for which no birth and death dates have been determined, we have begun arbitrarily entering a death date of Bef. 2010 in order to make them appear as deceased. We are slowly working our way through the tree updating the birth and/or death dates for this case.
Individuals are marked Private if they are Deceased and have not been deceased for at least 7 years. This is an arbitrary decision to temporarily protect their identity.
Note: This concept of Living and Deceased, which is obvious to most of us, will be the topic of a future genealogy post. We were surprised to learn that the standard file format for family trees—GEDCOM—does not contain the fact of whether an individual is Living or Deceased. So genealogy software applications each have to implement rules like those described above. So if we mark an individual as Deceased on Ancestry.com but do not enter a death date for them, and we then export the family tree to another application, the Deceased fact is lost and that other application determines whether the individual is Living or Deceased based on its own rules.
Q. But I’m family. Can I please see the hidden individuals?
A. To see the Living individuals, you must register for a user account. Read here about user accounts.
The Private individuals will remain hidden. Contact us for more information.
Q. How Do I Create a User Account?
A. This website requires registration for user accounts associated with two different areas of content:
Two separate accounts are necessary because these areas of the website use two different software applications (WordPress for the blog, and The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding for the family tree), and these applications unfortunately do not currently share login credentials. You are encouraged to register for these two accounts with the same user name and password to simplify things.
Important notes:
You can register for one, both, or neither of these accounts—it is up to you.
If you change the password of one user account, it will not change the password of the other account.
Q. If I see a mistake in the family tree information, can I correct it?
A. Mistakes?! Well, we have too many of those to count. Yes, please help correct our mistake.
The information page for each individual has a Suggest tab that allows you to send corrections or comments to us. We’ll review your information and update the Ancestry.com tree as appropriate. That information, if incorporated, will appear in the family tree on this website in a future download from Ancestry.com.
Q. Where can I find issues of the ten Krazy Ken’s Kin Knewsletter published in 2017?
A. After you register for a Family & Friends Membership and are accepted, you can access them in this post.
Q. What does not work yet?
A. Well, we’re not totally sure! Here is what we know about:
Find > Search Site will not work until Google has indexed the new genealogy portion of the website. This is now working.
Find > Cemeteries and Media > Headstones have not yet been populated with headstones (see #3 below).
Media > Photos and all other similar places that would display photos or other documents have not yet been populated with photos and documents. These must be downloaded from Ancestry.com and uploaded to this website. That’s for another day.
Mobile Mode, which is the layout used for smaller devices like iPhones, has not yet been customized for this website. Pages may therefore not look good or even be usable. This is now working.
atDNA — autosomal DNA is DNA from one of our chromosomes located in the cell nucleus. It generally excludes the sex chromosomes. Humans have 22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes and a pair of sex chromosomes.
bef. — before (meaning “on or before this date”)
bet. — between (meaning “on or between these dates”)
MDKA — Most Distant Known Ancestor, the earliest known, documented ancestor on a specific genealogical line
MRCA — Most Recent Common Ancestor between two people in the genealogical time frame (e.g. NOT Adam and Eve!).
mtDNA — The genetic material found in mitochondria. It is passed down from females to both sons and daughters, but sons do not pass down their mother’s mtDNA to their children.
NN — Latin, nomen nescio (“I do not know the name ”) is used for unknown given names and surnames (e.g. John NN or NN Doe).
unk. — unknown
Y-DNA — A Y-DNA test looks at male inherited Y-chromosome DNA.
Definitions
Remove — change one’s home or place of residence by moving to (another place)—“He removed to Wales and began afresh”.
The Spratlin-Knight-Wetherbee-Watne family tree is maintained by Ken Spratlin on Ancestry.com.
Other Trees
The master tree is periodically exported from Ancestry.com as a GEDCOM file and uploaded to the The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding (TNG) application on this website. The description field for the tree on this website contains the date and time of export from Ancestry.com. The most up-to-date information is therefore found in the tree on Ancestry.com.
The master tree is also synced with the Family Tree Maker (FTM) [macOS] application. FTM is primarily used to perform find-and-replace operations, manage custom event types, and manage place names.
Naming Conventions
Birth name (including maiden last name) entered as preferredname fact. Unknown maiden last name usually entered as NN (MarriedLastName), if married last name known.
Subsequent name change (e.g. last name Smyth changed to Smith) or alternative name spelling entered as alternatename fact. Note that Ancestry.com‘s search function appears to ignore text in parentheses (e.g. Smyth (Smith)).
This convention was adopted as we are generally researching back in time, up the tree, so birth name is usually of more interest than a name an individual may have used later in life.
Title (e.g. Doctor, Reverend, Private) entered as title fact.
Nickname entered as also known as fact. Nickname alternatively (legacy) entered as alternatename fact in parentheses instead of quotation marks (e.g. John (Johnny), instead of John “Johnny”).
Places
Place (called location on Ancestry.com) name entered as current, rather than historical, name so will appear in the correct place on mapping services (e.g. Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, Apple Maps). Historical place name, if listed in a source, entered in the description field of the fact.
Despite using current place names, many places are not known by the geocoding services (converts address into latitude and longitude) used by these mapping services. Also, most geocoding services easily confuse towns and counties sharing the same name. Therefore, correct latitude and longitude have been entered into many of the place records in the FTM and TNG databases for the family tree.
Preferred and Alternate Facts
Alternate facts entered for name facts, birth facts, and death facts instead of adding the information to the name fields of a preferredname fact or to the description field of a preferredbirth fact or preferreddeath fact (e.g. alternate name spelling entered as alternatename fact).
Note that Ancestry.com does not provide the preferred and alternate feature for marriage facts, so multiple marriage facts may appear with no indication of which is preferred. If multiple marriage facts are added, and one is preferred, the words Preferred and Alternate are entered in the description fields of the marriage facts.
Custom Events
We use several custom event types. These are all indicated by custom eventfact labels ending in “…“. This makes them easier to find within the Family Tree Maker application. Most are self-explanatory; perhaps these are not:
Interesting …
famous, distinguished, notorious, interesting, etc.
ISSUE …
identifies an issue in a profile needing resolution
Relationship …
provides additional relationship information
RESEARCH …
identifies a (non-issue) topic for future research
WARNING …
often identifies a non-person in the tree
Last Name Symbols
Despite numerous recommendations against doing so, we use a few symbols in the last name field of the name fact to make up for deficiencies in our research tools or our own memory.
People with these symbols in their name may be found using Ancestry.com’s people search functions on their website . The search behavior seems to vary. Tree Search at the top of the profile or tree windows is not order sensitive as long as the name text is first (e.g. NameText + | or NameText | + gives the same result). The List of all people search is order-sensitive. The search function on Ancestry.com’s iOS app is different, and this appears to not work at all
NN Latin nomen nescio (“I do not know the name”) used for unknown first and last names (e.g. John NN or NN Doe); started using this instead of tbd after seeing NN as a standard for at least one world tree project
+ Direct ancestor of MKS
++ Direct ancestor of MKS with multiple descending lines
? Confirmed by weak facts; something fishy needs to be resolved
?? A clue, not yet confirmed by facts (e.g. usually only saw name in someone else’s tree without supporting facts)
p?? Same as ?? but the parent (father and mother) relationships not yet confirmed f?? Same as ?? but the father relationship not yet confirmed m?? Same as ?? but the mother relationship not yet confirmed s?? Same as ?? but the spouse relationship not yet confirmed
up?? Same as ?? but the ascendant relationship not yet confirmed (discontinued use) dn?? Same as ?? but the descendant relationship not yet confirmed (discontinued use) sp?? Same as ?? but the spouse relationship not yet confirmed (discontinued use)
??? Probably incorrect based on available facts; something VERY fishy needs to be resolved
# Married a close cousin
| Immigrant (usually to North America)
_ Not a member of the family, but included in the tree for reference (e.g. friends, neighbors, purchasers of family property)
Special Symbols
{{ Private note (e.g. phone numbers, email addresses)—The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding (TNG) application on kenspratlin.com is configured to treat the description field of facts beginning with {{ as private, and the information is not displayed.
^ Military service is indicated with this symbol at the beginning of the description field of a title fact. If the military rank is also known, the title follows the symbol (e.g. ^ Private).
/ We attempted to use the / (division) symbol in name facts at one time. We then learned that GEDCOM files use / to separate the prefix, first name, last name, and last name suffix fields of the name fact (e.g. John/Doe/). Using this symbol in the fields of a name fact caused serious problems when importing and exporting trees between various genealogy applications. So we do not do that any more!
