This family tree is designed to "center on" one or two individuals, who are designated as the "Husband" and "Wife". The data for all of the other individuals is stored and referenced with regard to their relationship to these individuals. Persons in the tree who have no relationship to them are still accessible, but only from one or more of the "List" Views. See the section below on Views for more details.
The entire family tree is offered in two forms, one is a Unicode encoded form, where all of the text, including the Chinese names, is in Unicode encoding. This is the preferable form to use if you browser will support Unicode text. The other form uses Latin encoding, which supports European languages, but not Chinese. In this form, the Chinese characters are all displayed using small pictures of the characters. This will be less attractive, and slower, but should work with any browser. The two forms can be selected using the buttons at the upper right corner of the Home page. The form you are currently viewing is shown in the upper left of the Home page. The main noticeable difference will be in the Chinese characters. If they appear to be incorrect, try the other form.
The data on this site is organized into a number of views into the same data, mainly different methods for reaching the data for an individual, but also some views showing relationships between individuals. The views are:
This is the only place with all the data for this individual, including their dates, names of parents, spouse, children, notes and pictures. This view has links to the Home page, the Pedigree View for this individual, and to the Individual View for all of the immediate relatives. There may also be links to lists of locations and to references sited for this individual. You can navigate all through the family tree by following the family links up (Parents), across (Spouses) or down (Children), and see the full data for each individual, one at a time.
Note that data of a personal nature for individuals who are or might be living is shown as "Hidden" and is protected by a second level of password. If you try to access this "Hidden" data, you will be prompted for the ID and password associated with the surname for that individual. If you provide the correct ID and password, you will navigate to a similar Individual View, with the hidden data exposed. This is to allow close family members to access the hidden data (e.g. to make corrections).
The Individual View for the Husband and/or Wife can be accessed from the Home page, by clicking on their names, or from many of the other views listed below.
This view provides data on up to 4 generations in one page, showing just the names, relationships and birth/death dates for each individual. Each page is still an individual view, but shows the spouse, children, parents and grandparents, in a simple tree arrangement. Clicking on names in the tree will move to the Pedigree View for the person selected. Clicking on the name in the heading will move to the Individual View for that person. As with the Individual View, the entire family tree can be navigated by selecting parents, grandparents, spouse or children to move up, down or across the tree.
As with the Individual view, specific dates are hidden for individuals who are or may be living. Unlike the Individual view, that data cannot be accessed from the Pedigree View, even with additional ID and password. See the Individual View above for instructions for accessing "Hidden" data.
This view provides a graphical representation of all of the ancestors of the Husband and/or Wife. Individuals are represented by dots, and relationships by lines. A dashed line indicates that the name of the ancestor is unknown (may be either the first or last name, or both), and blue lines indicate that the relationship, or other details about this ancestor are uncertain. Clicking on any of the dots will link you to the Individual View for that person. Most browsers will display the path for these links when the cursor is moved over the dot, allowing you to see the name of the Individual. This view allows you to navigate directly to any of the ancestors with just one click. The ancestor tree view is reached from the Home page via the link labeled "A clickable tree of NNN ancestors."
Similar to the Ancestor View, this view provides a graphical representation of all of the descendants of each "leaf" from the ancestor tree. These views are reached by first navigating to the Individual View of one of the "leaf" ancestors, and then clicking on the link for descendants. A "leaf" is an ancestor who has no other ancestors in the database. To see the descendant tree of an individual who is not a "leaf", go first the any "leaf" ancestor of that individual, and select his or her Descendant Tree. That tree will include the Descendants of the individual you were looking for.
As with the Ancestor View, individuals are represented by dots, and relationships by lines. A dashed line indicates that the name of the ancestor is unknown (may be either the first or last name, or both), and blue lines indicate that the relationship, or other details about this ancestor are uncertain. Clicking on any of the dots will link you to the Individual View for that person. Most browsers will display the path for these links when the cursor is moved over the dot, allowing you to see the name of the Individual. This view allows you to navigate directly to any of the descendants of this individual with just one click.
This table, reachable from the Home page via a link labeled "A linked table of NNN unique surnames." lists all of the surnames in the database with a count of individuals having that surname. Note that some browsers have trouble displaying this table, and you may need to use the scroll bar or page up/down arrows to get it to display when you first go to this table. Clicking on any of the surnames in the table takes you to the Names List View for that surname.
This view provides a complete list of all individuals in the database, organized by surname. The best way to reach this view is from the Surname Table View. Each person's name is a link to the Individual View for that person. In addition to the name, the encoded relationship(s) of this person to the Husband or Wife is also shown. More than one relationship may exist, but the first relationship is the one used to store the individual data for this person.
The relationship is a string of letters, beginning with H or W, for Husband or Wife, and followed by a combination of the letters H,W,F,M,B,S,s,d, or c to indicate Husband,Wife,Father,Mother,Brother,Sister,son,daughter or child, respectively. If there is more than one relationship, they will be listed one after another, separated by commas. Multiple relationships are generally the result of "cousin" marriages. Only the "shortest" unique relationship should be shown (e.g. HS is also HFWd, and for that matter, might be HFMFFFMsssdsd, but only HS would be shown).
This list is the way to reach persons in the database who are not related to the Husband and/or Wife. Those persons will have no relationship shown.
There are also lists of names of individuals with various information needed, such as a date, name or other specifics. These are accessible from the Home page, and have the same form as the Name List View.
Lists are also provided of unique locations referenced in the database. Currently, from the Home page, you can access lists of all unique locations, all countries or regions, and US states and counties. Other categories may be added in the future.