Ancestor Report

What Is an Ancestor Report?

Ahnentafel Numbering
Creating an Ancestor Report
For Whom?
How Many Generations?
Pruning

The Narrative Option

Layout

Miscellaneous Settings

Index

Removing Duplication


Sources
Pictures
Title
Destination
Privacy Filter

What Is an Ancestor Report?

An ancestor report begins with one person and moves backward in time. It includes ancestors (parents, parents' parents, etc.) of the starting person, along with information about each ancestor along the way. The report is similar to an ancestor chart — it begins with a starting person and moves backward in time. Each ancestor is assigned a unique ahnentafel number, beginning with 1 for the source person. (Ahnentafel is a German word that translates as ancestor table.) The report is divided by generation.

Here is an example page from an ancestor report as it would appear in Reunion's Book feature...

Ahnentafel Numbering

The ahnentafel (or Sosa-Stradonitz) numbering system assigns the number 1 to the source person. The father of number 1 is number 2. The spouse of 2 is 3. The rule is: to find the father of a person, double the number. To find the mother of a person, double the number and add 1.

Creating an Ancestor Report

To create an ancestor report...

  1. Click Reports in the navbar.
  2. Click Ancestor in the list of reports.

A panel with several options appears in the center of Reunion's window.

For Whom?

By default, names of the husband and wife of the current family appear when you select Reports > Ancestor. To create an ancestor report for a different person, you can select (single-click) any name in any sidebar and the "Who" section will be updated. Or, you can return to the family view and navigate until you find the desired starting person.

The ancestor report begins with a starting person and looks "backward." It gathers information about all direct ancestors of the starting person until it reaches the beginning of a lineage or it reaches the specified number of generations (2 to 99).

How Many Generations?

To set the size of an ancestor report, use the up/down arrows next to the Generations field or type a number into the field. Ancestor reports can be from 2 to 99 generations. The size — in number of characters — is limited only by the amount of available disk space.

Pruning

As Reunion is gathering ancestors for the report, it will only include marked ancestors if the Marked ancestors only button is checked. Duplication is explained later on this page.

The Narrative Option

The Ancestor report is traditionally (and by default) a document in the "narrative" style, presenting information (names, events, facts, etc.) in sentence and paragraph form (as if it were spoken). By contrast, the "outline" style presents the same information in more of a "form" — arranged with blocks of data and columns of field titles beside indented columns of information. Reunion's traditional Family History report is an example of an outline-style report.

Some people feel that the outline style is easier-to-follow; however, in Reunion's Ancestor reports, the choice is yours. Just check or uncheck the Narrative button in the report panel.

Layout

The Ancestor report layout specifies the information (which person fields, which family fields, etc.) that will be included for each person in the report.

After selecting Reports > Ancestor (or Reports > Book > Ancestor) the Ancestor report layout can be changed by clicking the Layout button and choosing Define Layouts. Most of the layout settings for ancestor reports are common to other reports and are discussed elsewhere. One layout setting, Miscellaneous, is explained below.

Miscellaneous Settings

The Define Ancestor Report Layouts window contains a Miscellaneous setting with several choices that are unique to Ancestor reports. These are described below.

Subtitles

Ancestor reports are divided by generation. The Subtitles button includes three options for the title applied to each generation of the report:

No Titles
1 John Fitzgerald KENNEDY Jr.
2 John Fitzgerald KENNEDY
3 Jacqueline Lee BOUVIER
4 Joseph Patrick KENNEDY
5 Rose Elizabeth FITZGERALD
6 John Vernou BOUVIER III
7 Janet Norton LEE
Generation

First Generation
1 John Fitzgerald KENNEDY Jr.
Second Generation
2 John Fitzgerald KENNEDY
3 Jacqueline Lee BOUVIER
Third Generation
4 Joseph Patrick KENNEDY
5 Rose Elizabeth FITZGERALD
6 John Vernou BOUVIER III
7 Janet Norton LEE
Relationship
1 John Fitzgerald KENNEDY Jr.
Parents
2 John Fitzgerald KENNEDY
3 Jacqueline Lee BOUVIER
Grandparents
4 Joseph Patrick KENNEDY
5 Rose Elizabeth FITZGERALD
6 John Vernou BOUVIER III
7 Janet Norton LEE

Page Breaks

To include a page break before each generation, check the Page breaks button.

List Children

To include a list of children of each parent, grandparent, etc., check the List children button. A simple example is shown below.

Include memos for events

To include the memo field with each event, check the Include memos for events button.

Numbering

Ancestor reports utilize ahnentafel numbering, by default. Another option is to use simple sequential numbering which has no gaps for missing people in the ancestry. To use sequential numbering, click the Numbering button (in the Define Ancestor Report Layouts window) and select Sequential.

Index

An index will appear at the end of the ancestor report. An ancestor report index includes all ancestors in the report. Surnames are grouped together and each line in each surname group includes an ancestor's first name(s) and ahnentafel number. Settings for report indexes are discussed here.

Removing Duplication

Duplication in ancestor reports is caused when relatives marry. You should visualize the duplication in two parts: the generation where it first appears and in previous generations (earlier generations appear later in the ancestor report).

Reunion conveniently avoids duplicating information and identifies where it appears in ancestor reports. The line "same as number x" will appear when a person already appears in an ancestor report.

Duplication — Where It First Appears

If a source person of a report had parents who were second cousins, you would first encounter ancestral duplication when you moved backward in time to the fifth generation. In such an example below, Hilary EHRENZELLER and Elizabeth LAUVER first appear as number 18 and 19 in the ancestor report. They appear later as number 24 and 25; however, their information is not duplicated.

Removing Duplication in Previous Generations

To omit further occurrences of duplication which appear in preceding generations (but later in the ancestor report), check the Remove duplication button in the Reports > Ancestor panel. If the Remove duplication button is unchecked, further occurrences of duplication will be included, but notated as before: "Same as number x."

Thus, following the example above, if you check the Remove duplication button, the parents of person 24 and 25 (these would be persons 48, 49, 50, and 51) would be omitted from the sixth generation of the ancestor report. Likewise, other ancestors of person 24 and 25 would be omitted. In the seventh generation, this would include persons 96 through 103. In the eighth generation, this would include persons 192 through 207, and so on. As you can see, using the Remove duplication button can shorten your ancestor reports.

However, if the Remove duplication button was unchecked, the parents of person 24 and 25 would appear as follows:

Our information only included the father of "48 Jacob EHRENZELLER" and the parents of "50 Christian LAUVER." They would appear as follows:

And so on.