Consider the following scenario: You are new to the hobby of genealogy. You learn from a friend that your local public library has a nice collection of genealogy books. You go to the library and climb the stairs to the third floor where the section is located. In front of you is a stack of books neatly arranged alphabetically by a family’s last name. You follow along the shelves until you come to a volume with your family name as part of the title.

With trembling hands, you remove the book from the shelf and examine it. It is old, with a slightly faded and tattered cover. You flip through the dry and brittle pages, recognizing few names. You turn to the index. Suddenly, a name seems to leap off the page! There, in black and white, is your grandfather’s name. Quickly you locate the indicated page, then his name on the page. The magic fades. The information doesn’t make sense; there are numbers everywhere. You can’t tell how his information fits into all the other family information contained in the old book…

This scenario doesn’t have to end like this. Many compiled family histories utilize an organizational system known as the Register format. In this article, we will discuss how this system is used to show relationships between generations that you might encounter in your research. We will give examples of how this system looks and will provide some useful tips when using this system.

With a little review and practice, these published family histories can provide some outstanding clues to help you trace back a family, sometimes several generations.

First, let us introduce you to our fictional family that will serve as our example for this numbering system. We opted for a fictional family so we wouldn’t mislead any researcher nor be guilty of providing potentially erroneous information. (This is a good place to point out an important tip: Do not accept the information you locate simply because it appears in a printed book. The information you find should be treated as a solid lead in your research and each clue should be verified independently with genealogical documentation such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, etc.)

The patriarch of our family is Harley Roswell, an immigrant who arrived from an unknown homeland along with his wife Ethel (Collins) Roswell. Little is known about them except that they had five children: Harley, Collins, Bart, Elayne, and Jasper. Three of their children had children of their own and it was grandson Marvin who prepared the family tree.

What follows is a sample of how the family data might appear when presented in the Register format, a style you will encounter when doing research in published family histories. This system was popularized by the New England Historic Genealogical Society as a standard for publishing family genealogies in their publication The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. This quarterly journal has been published since 1847 and is a valuable secondary source for any researcher who might have a New England connection.

The Register numbering method was also utilized in many published family histories that appeared at the end of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. This system is a descendant numbering system. It starts with a key person, usually the immigrant bearing the family name. This person is assigned the number 1 and each of his children who have children is assigned the next higher number.

Using the Register numbering system, data on our fictional family appears as shown. Please remember that we are focusing on the numbering system, so you won’t find the textual information you would normally find in a published genealogy. Examine the data carefully so that you note the different positions of the numbers and the different styles of the numbers. Following the sample data we will present some explanatory notes. Please note that the Register format we are about to explain applies to family histories published from the late nineteenth century to 1990. Family histories published in the recent past will vary slightly.

2. The Register format represents the study of the descendants who bear a particular family name. Thus, only males are assigned one of the bold Arabic numbers that appear on the left margin.

3. The superscripted number immediately after an individual’s first name represents the person’s generation of descent relative to the key individual. Thus Harley¹ is the first generation; Marvin³ is in the third generation of descent, or Harley¹’s grandchild.

4. The small Roman numerals represent the known birth order of the children in a given family. If birth order is not known, the researcher usually presents the children in the best guess order of birth. Others present the children in the order they were discovered. In our example, Harley and his wife Ethel had five children: i. Harley², ii. Collins², iii. Bart², iv. Elayne², and v. Jasper². (Note: If superscripted numbers appear at the end of a sentence or following a date, they refer to the footnotes or endnotes in the study.)

5. If a male child is not known to have any children, then no bold Arabic number is assigned to him. Please note that Bart² Roswell, the third child listed for Harley¹, has no bold Arabic number so he has no known descendants.

6. If a female child is known to have married and born children, that information is provided along with her birth information. Note that Elayne² has additional family data. She married a Roger Carson and had two known children. These children have superscripted numbers (Harley³ and Roger³) because they are of the third generation of descendants from Harley¹. They are his grandsons but they do not carry the Roswell name so that line of descent ends with them in this study. Immediately following Elayne’s information is v. Jasper² Roswell, the last known child of Harley¹ and Ethel.

7. Note the bold Arabic numbers 2, 3, and 4 that appear twice on the left-hand margin. These represent the continuation of family data on these sons. Thus 2. Harley² Roswell appears first as a child in the family of Harley¹ and then further down the page as the adult male in his own family. There he is shown to have married Mary Jones and their four children are listed, two of whom were males who went on to marry and have children of their own.

8. Most of us, when doing research in published family genealogies, actually enter the data backwards. That is, we go to the index, locate the name of a known ancestor, and turn to the appropriate page. In our example, pretend you were descended from someone named Marshall Williams Roswell. You look in the index, find his name, and turn to our sample page where you find the name Marshall³ Williams Roswell. Using the Register format, you follow up the page to determine who his parents are. Here we see that Jasper² Roswell and his wife Mariah Williams are the parents. Notice that Jasper² has the bold number 4. to the left of his name. Again, follow up the page (or back through the pages in a longer family history) until you locate the same Jasper² and the previous occurrence of the bold number 4. You have located Jasper¹, this time listed as a child with the small Roman numeral v., identifying him as the fifth child in his parents’ family.

To go back further generations, you simply continue the process. Follow up the page or pages to locate the bold number for the father of that family and then back again to locate him as a child in his parents’ family. In this example, you can see that the father of Jasper² is the progenitor, Harley¹. In a well-done genealogy, you can trace back several generations this way.

When working with information from a published family history, remember first that you don’t know, for example, that the Marshall Williams Roswell you locate is your ancestor. All you have to go on is the similarity of names. This is an example of how a good genealogy can provide clues, but not necessarily factual data that is relevant to your research.

Also, it is worth entering the information you find on your pedigree chart in pencil so you can pursue the supporting data at a later time. Good research techniques require that you pursue these clues further and prove the data by locating actual primary documentation, such as birth certificates.

Hopefully this information will help you when you encounter a published family history that utilizes the Register numbering system. An excellent exercise would be to take three generations from your own research and arrange it in the Register numbering format. In this way, you will gain good insight into how the system functions. If you are using genealogy software on your PC to organize your research, try printing a Register report.

It is our wish that you encounter an equally wonderful collection of data on your own family. The scenario at the library we presented earlier really can have a happy ending.

Terry and Jim Willard hosted the ten-part “Ancestors” series. They have researched their family history fifteen generations back on both sides.

Return to the Ancestry Magazine May/June 2002 Table of Contents.