Previous FAQ: FMers or MFers
I tend to display family trees in Ancestry.com Sideways, with parents to the right (ie your ancestors) and children to the left (descendants). When viewed vertically, the distinction between any individual’s ancestors and descendants becomes much more clear:
Ancestors – the people who make up you – is represented by a triangle sitting on it’s apex. You are the “bottom”, and traverse to your ancestors “up” the tree.
Descendants – the people who call you an ancestor – is represented by a triangle sitting on it’s base. You are the “top”, and traverse to you descendants “down” the tree.
Sisters, Brothers, Uncles, Aunts, and Cousins occur when a tree starts including descendants (other than you) of one of your ancestors. Top-Down and Bottom-Up simultaneously.
The reason I am taking the time to put his in my FAQ is…. In general, my tree does not contain sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, and cousins. From a cold-hearted perspective, these relations do not really affect the information I am attempting to collect. In general. Specifically, there are a few notable exceptions:
- People who are connected to Myself (Janella / Sarah / Emily) via social media, and may be interested in where they fit into the tree structure.
- Really (really) cool people who are “near-misses” – meaning that they are very (very) close to a bloodline, but are not one of the blood ancestors. An example would be a great-to-the-nth-grandfather, who’s brother is Pope.
Finally, such people (who are included in my tree who are not ancestors or descendants of my daughters) are universally deemed to be a “cousin”. It may not seem intuitive, but *all* brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles are actually cousins. (For real, see Kissing Cousins)
Next FAQ: Grains of Salt
Sang Roial 