Cascading Pedigree Chart

What Is a Cascading Pedigree?
Printing a Cascading Pedigree
For Whom?
Blank Charts
How Many Generations?

Index
Pruning and Removing Duplication
Box Setup
What's in the Boxes?

Pictures in Cascading Pedigrees
Box Numbering

Title
Return Address
Default Settings for Cascading Pedigrees
Updating a Cascading Pedigree

Fonts

Ancestor Charts

Tree View

What Is a Cascading Pedigree?

A cascading pedigree is a series of four- or five-generation, single-page charts that begin with one person and move backward in time — showing direct ancestors only. Each chart in a cascading pedigree is cross-referenced so it's easy to see where one chart "continues" on another. The continuation numbers appear on the right side of boxes in the last generation of each chart.

Note: To create larger, editable graphic charts (such as wall charts), check out descendant charts, ancestor charts, bowtie charts and relative charts. Also, the tree view can be printed.
Printing a Cascading Pedigree

To print a cascading pedigree...

  1. Select Charts in the navbar on the left.
  2. Select Cascading Pedigree from the list of charts.

A panel full of options will appear.

Clicking the Print button will open the standard macOS Print window. We strongly suggest that you click the PDF button in the Print window and choose Open PDF in Preview. Doing so will let you see exactly how the chart will look before printing. Learn more.

For Whom?

When you create a cascading pedigree chart, Reunion will start with a person on the current family view and look "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 (4 to 97).

To create a cascading pedigree chart for a different person, you can select (single-click) any name in any sidebar and the "Who" section will be updated. By default, names of the husband/wife of the current family appear in the "Who" section when you select Charts > Cascading Pedigree.

Blank Charts

If the Blank button is selected, Reunion will print a pedigree chart with empty boxes. Blank charts are ideal for gathering data on people, especially when beginning your research.

How Many Generations?

To set the total number of generations included in a cascading pedigree, use the Total generations button. Cascading pedigree charts can be from 4 to 97 generations in increments of 3 or 4. The choices depend on the number of generations per page.

A cascading pedigree can include four or five generations per page.

Index

To include an index for everybody in the cascading pedigree chart, check the Append index button. The index will resemble the excerpt below, where people with the same surname are grouped together, and each line indicates the chart number and the box number.

Pruning and Removing Duplication

As Reunion is gathering ancestors for the chart, it will only include marked ancestors if the Marked ancestors only button is checked.

If the Remove duplicates button is checked, Reunion will conveniently avoid duplicating branches. Ancestral duplication in a cascading pedigree is caused when relatives marry. Duplicate boxes will refer back to the original branch in the chart. If the original box is on a different page of the chart (than the duplicate), the chart number and box number will be referenced. If the original and duplicate are on the same page, only the box number will be referenced.

Box Setup

To see additional options for a cascading pedigree, click the Box Setup button in the Cascading Pedigree window. This opens the Box Setup window.

Any item that is checked in this list will be appended to names. In addition, you can...

What's in the Boxes?

Cascading pedigrees contain multi-line boxes with each piece of information on a separate line. Each box contains...

The only exception are the boxes in the last generation of the five-generations-per-page version — these only contain name, birth date, and death date. Boxes for females do not contain a marriage date or place.

All boxes are the same width, except the boxes in the last generation of the five-generation version — these are narrower.

First names in longer entries may be automatically abbreviated in order to fit the names into chart boxes. If a place name is too long to fit into a box, it will be truncated.

Pictures in Cascading Pedigrees

Before a chart is created, Reunion can be configured to include preferred pictures inside the boxes of cascading pedigree charts. To do this...

  1. Select Charts > Cascading Pedigree.
  2. Check the Preferred pictures button.

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Box Numbering

Each box of each single-page chart is numbered according to the ahnentafel numbering system which 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.

Ahnentafel numbers appear in bold, to the left of boxes.

The first box on each page of a cascading pedigree chart will always start with number 1. The reason for this is that the numbers could get very large when creating a chart for more than a few generations.

Title

To use a custom title for the cascading pedigrees chart, type a title into the Title field. Your title is remembered, the next time you choose to create a cascading pedigree.

Return Address

Cascading pedigrees will include the family file return address in the bottom-left corner of each chart. This is defined in your Report Settings.

Default Settings for Cascading Pedigrees
Updating a Cascading Pedigree

If you have printed a cascading pedigree and then discover a mistake or new information that affects one of the charts, you can return to the source person of the cascading pedigree and create an updated version.

By using the macOS Preview app, you can locate the particular page that needs to be updated, and then print only that particular page. This strategy will avoid printing an entire series of cascading pedigree charts when only one of the charts needs to be changed.

The Preview app is explained here.

Fonts in Cascading Pedigree Charts

To change the fonts used in cascading pedigree printouts...

  1. Select Charts in the navbar on the left.
  2. Select Cascading Pedigree from the list of charts.
  3. Click the Fonts button.

You can pick a different font for two categories that apply to cascading pedigrees: primary names and data.

category
cascading pedigree chart
primary names
names of ancestors
everything else
everything else

By default, cascading pedigree charts are set to use Helvetica font for primary names and Times font for everything else. Experimenting with different fonts could allow for longer entries in chart boxes because some fonts allow a few more characters in the same amount of horizontal space.