What is an Ahnentafel Number?

What is an Ahnentafel Number?

The word Ahnentafel is a German word for Ancestry. It is the numbering system I have come up with that I have for each one of my ancestors. The number never changes.

When I start my students out with a pedigree chart I have them always start with their name first. You become #1.in the numbering system. Each male generation going up is 2 times the previous number.
For example:
#1 is myself
#2 is my father
#4 is my father’s father
#8 is my father’s father’s father
#16 is my father’s father’s father’s father

All males have even numbers and females have odd numbers
For example:
#3 is my mother
# 5 is my mother’s mother
# 9 is my mother’s mother’s mother
#17 is my mother’s mother’s mother

Note that the female numbers are one number more than their spouse and their father’s number is twice what their number is.

To make it easier to understand, please look on a pedigree chart and you can see what I am talking about. This numbering system has been around for a long time, but the interesting thing is that after this page of generations there is not another chart that starts with the number 16, or17 or 18 thru 31. This is where I have always had a hard time picturing in my mind what I do next to keep this numbering system going so I can visually see who the next person is on a pedigree chart.

If you are saying to me that there are large charts that show that numbering system, you are correct, but there is nothing that continues the numbering process on an 8 X 11 pedigree chart. Soooooooooooooooo this is how I do it that works great for me and hopefully you will see that is will work for you better than a lot of the other systems that are out there, only because it is easy to understand who belongs to whom and which generation a family belongs to by just looking at the numbering system.

Now to get back to what happens after your first 5 generation pedigree chart numbering system.

Your 5th generation numbers start with 16 thru 31.
The next step is to take a new pedigree chart and take # 16 on the first chart and put that # and the person’s name in the first position on the new chart.
You will write #16 over the #1 that is printed on the paper.

Then take # 17 and put it on another clean pedigree chart and put the person’s number & name in the # 1 position. Write over 1 and put # 17 and you continue to do this procedure until you have all the numbers from 16 to 31 done on new pedigree sheets.
You will end up with 16 pedigree charts plus the one with the first 5 generations you have already done.

I am going to let you work on this part of the system until you understand it and then I will give you your next lesson.

Please don’t get discouraged. If you don’t understand this lesson let me know. I am here to help not to discourage you. This is my first time at teaching on line so be patient with me.

If you don’t have 5 generations yet don’t worry, you will still need this numbering system for the workbook you will be putting together soon.

Until I put the next lesson together, good luck and I hope you will come back to visit my Blog.