An Ahnentafel (German for "ancestor table") is a compact way of listing one's ancestors according to a particular numeric sequence. "1" is the source individual (in this case, me), "2" is one's father, "3" is one's mother, "4" is one's paternal grandfather, "5" is one's paternal grandmother, and so on with the maternal grandparents. So one's grandparents occupy numbers 4 through 7, great-grandparents are 8 through 15 (since there are twice as many), great-great-grandparents are 16 through 31, and so on back through the generations.
By using this system, a couple of useful regularities emerge. Males always have even numbers, and females are always odd. An individual's father can be found by doubling the number, and the mother is that number plus one. Working forward in time, the child of an individual will be half of that person's number (ignoring the fractional result in the case of mothers).
The advantage of such a listing is that it is very easy to jump around between generations. Unless you are very closely related to me, you're probably interested in following just one particular line of descent. Let's say that we share an ancestor listed here as number 58. His wife will appear next as number 59. You can also easily find that person's parents, who will be numbers 116 (58 x 2 = his father) and 117 (58 x 2 + 1 = his mother). Similarly, the child of ancestors 58 and 59 will be number 29 (half of 58).
Navigation is pretty straightforward. Click on a link in the Ahnentafel, and you will see a profile for that ancestor. A graphic will show you a picture of the individual, or a tombstone, or the coat of arms of the place where he or she lived. Names in bold indicate links to the individual's father, mother, spouse, and the child who continues the line of descent. (A complete listing of the children for each couple appears on the females' pages.) Other links provide geographical or historical information on a separate places page.
If you get lost, you can return to the Ahnentafel by clicking on the link at the bottom left of each page. If you want to view each profile in order, there's a link at the bottom middle of the pages for that, too. A link at the bottom right leads to a list of sources.
Missing numbers represent ancestors who have not yet been identified. I hope to fill in more of these as time goes by, but this becomes much, much harder as one moves farther back in time. You'll notice that the numbers stop almost entirely in the twelfth generation (which corresponds to the 1640s). This is largely because a quarter of my family originated in the present-day Saarland of southwestern Germany, and many records from this area were destroyed during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).
Unscrupulous individuals can use the information in family history sites to commit identity theft. Such information includes maiden names and dates of birth. Although such problems are fairly unlikely, I've restricted this site to individuals who are deceased.
When two individuals who are related to each other marry and have children, this reduces the number of unique ancestors possessed by their offspring. This phenomenon was named "pedigree collapse" by Robert Gunderson (see Shoumatoff, 1985). In other words, an individual who is the ancestor of two descendant ancestors will occupy two "slots" in the family tree.
In my case, two of my great-grandparents, Peter Kreuz (number 8) and Mary Gillen (number 9), were second cousins once removed, on two different lines. This is because Johannes Gillen (number 66) and Anna Plettener (number 67) were the great-grandparents of Peter Kreuz, as well as the great-great grandparents of Mary Gillen. Furthermore, Mathias Jung (number 70) and A. Elisabetha Schnur (number 71) were also great-grandparents of Peter Kreuz and great-great grandparents of Mary Gillen.
Let's just consider the first duplication. Johannes Gillen appears as number 66 because he is the great-grandfather of Peter Kreuz, number 8, and his eight great-grandparents are numbered 64 to 71. However, the same individual must also appear as number 144, as the great-great-grandfather of Mary Gillen, number 9, whose 16 great-great grandparents are numbered 144-159.
Instead of listing Johannes Gillen twice, his name (and linked profile) appears in the Ahnentafel just once, as number 66. The entry for number 144 in the Ahnentafel reads "{same as number 66}." Clicking on the link for number 144 moves you to number 66, emphasizing the fact that they are the same person.
Keep in mind that this will affect all earlier generations, as well. The father of Johannes Gillen, Johann Jacob, will also need to appear twice -- once as number 132 (66 times 2) and again as number 288 as a duplicate (144 times 2). Out of 280 ancestors that I have identified to date, 28 are duplicates, and four more are triplicates, appearing in my family tree three times.
At this point, you may be wondering how many fingers and eyes I have. However, let me assure you that pedigree collapse is very common. In a small village over many generations, it becomes almost impossible not to marry a second, third, or fourth cousin. Pedigree collapse will be found in every family tree if one goes back far enough. In fact, it's mathematically inevitable. Let's start with person X, born in 1960, and count a generation as being 30 years long. If we assume no pedigree collapse, thirty generations back, around the year 1060, person X would need over a billion ancestors in that generation -- far more than the population of the earth at that time.
Short answer: they got married. Long answer: it's a genealogical convention to list females by their maiden names. This prevents confusion in the case of multiple marriages. However, it tends to confuse people not familiar with the convention. So I've split the difference: the Ahnentafel follows the convention of listing females by their maiden names (and capitalizing all SURNAMES), whereas the individual pages use the woman's married name, which will be more familiar.
Well, it's because the names of places change as you go back in time. Seriously, this is another issue that is more complicated than it first appears. Most of my ancestors were German, but Germany didn't exist as a country until 1871. Before that, it was a constantly shifting patchwork of hundreds of political divisions. I have chosen to give birth and death locations using the political distinctions that existed at those points in time.
You can see this clearly if you click on my great-grandfather, Peter Kreuz (number 8). He was born in the kingdom of Prussia, but his wife (number 9), born in the same village eleven years later, was born in Germany. If you follow the Kreuz line backwards by clicking on the fathers, you'll see that, although the various generations of this line lived in the town of Bliesen, the village itself belonged to a variety of political entities at different points in time (and was even part of France at various times).
Although I think this approach is enlightening, it can be confusing at times. It can also be difficult to determine exactly who controlled what when. I've done my best with this, and I hope that it provides an additional historical dimension in understanding the lives of these individuals.
In some cases, particularly with very distant ancestors, all I know is the person's name, so a separate page would be superfluous.
There is some truth to this. I've tried to make each ancestor profile stand on its own in order to increase coherence and to minimize the amount of flipping back and forth between pages. As a result, the profiles for the husband, wife, and child in the same family will contain repeated information. I've reduced this somewhat by offloading geographical and historical details to a separate places page.
I have tried to be quite careful about making statements for which I lack evidence. Statements given without qualification, like "She was born in Helferskirchen," mean that I have positive evidence for that fact.
Alternatively, I have used probably for cases in which a fact does not appear explicitly in my sources, but is nonetheless extremely likely. I used "probably," for example, to qualify the unknown place of birth of a person whose siblings were all born in the same place.
The word possibly means that it is likely that the fact is correct, but the evidence is more circumstantial. For example, it is possible that a man died in the village where his children was born, but it is by no means certain.
I have made use of circa to indicate inferred dates (either my own or those recorded as such). For example, a woman who gave birth to seven children between 1820 and 1840 was most probably born circa 1800. A similar (but less foolproof) procedure has been used to estimate the year of birth for men. These years have been rounded to end either in "0" or "5," and should be taken as estimates only.
Finally, before and after are used to estimate years of birth or death if they can be tied to a definitely known fact. For example, the year of death of a woman can be logically stated as after the birth of her last child, and I have used such estimates extensively. Of course, the individual may have lived for many years after the birth of her last child.
Quite possibly. Although this Web site only lists my ancestors and their children, I've now documented thousands of relatives. Please contact me, and we can exchange information.
I decided against providing sources for each fact to avoid littering the text with parenthetical references and footnotes. This would have made the narratives much more difficult to read. Instead, each profile has a link to a sources page, which is broken down by family groups. The sources give credit where it is due, and provides the interested reader with the primary and secondary sources that I've used to construct the profiles.
Yes, you can. As an academician, my attitude towards information is that is should be shared freely and as widely as possible. In addition, I wouldn't even have much of this information without the generosity of many other people. However, if you plan to make extensive use of the information presented here, I would appreciate some acknowledgement; please contact me if you have questions about this.
Guess what -- I probably do, too. In many cases, I've found discrepancies with regard to dates, places, and other facts. Instead of listing all of the possibilities, I have sometimes chosen to present the most likely information, based upon my sources. In other cases, I've identified the discrepancy and given the sources for the information, allowing the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.
The most authoritative sources are those recorded at the time of the event (e.g., church records for births and marriages, and death certificates for causes of death). Some sources are notoriously inaccurate (e.g., census records). Other sources may record events that occurred many years earlier (e.g., dates of immigration in obituaries). I've even discovered that many of the dates chiseled into tombstones are in error (several examples of this can be seen in the "Fifth Generation" ancestors listed here).
Of course, it's also possible that I've simply made a mistake. If you possess information from primary sources that contradicts what you find in this Web site, please contact me -- I'm grateful for all corrections, additions, and suggestions.
Roger Kreuz
Memphis, Tennessee
(page created December 2004; revised August 2011)
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