In closing this chapter we may add that the service of the Genealogical and Biographical Department of The Grafton Press is intended to cover every phase of genealogical compilation as well as of genealogical research. The entire work will be undertaken—both the investigation of the family lines and the preparation of the manuscript for the press, or the data accumulated by others will be compiled. Manuscript which has been arranged but is not satisfactory will be rearranged and edited, or entirely rewritten, as desired.[3]
In the chapters which immediately follow, the subject of "compiling" is continued in connection with the two forms into which a genealogical work may be cast. As we shall see, these forms are fundamentally so different in plan that the reader must make his choice between them at the outset. The great point before us in the present chapter is that of compiling so as to make an authoritative work.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Address, on this subject, The Grafton Press, Genealogical and Biographical Department, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Estimates will be given on data or manuscripts submitted.
IV THE "CLAN" GENEALOGY
Our chapter heading is simply a re-christening of the oldest and hitherto the favorite plan of the American genealogist. We might rather call it the American genealogy, for nearly all the genealogical works, which have seen the light, are of this kind.
The plan of most of the existing works is distinctly that of the exhibition of a genealogical tribe or clan. Its purpose is to assemble in one book all the known descendants of a certain ancestor, or only the male descendants who are bearers of the family surname. The head of the clan is generally the first American emigrant, and his family becomes "Family 1" of the book. "Family 2" will depend upon our choice of one of two modifications of the general plan.
Let us suppose that the head of the clan is John Smith, and that he had three children, Mary, John, and Philip, all of whom had families. If our purpose is to exhibit the entire clan, we will make no difference between daughters who marry and give their children the surnames of their husbands, and sons who give their children the surname of the head of the clan. In that case, the family of John Smith being Family 1, that of his oldest child, Mary, will be Family 2, while the families of John and Philip will be 3 and 4 respectively. In the third generation we will go back to Mary's oldest child, who left descendants, who will become the head of Family 5, followed by her other children, who had families, in the order of birth. The children of John will next be given in order of birth, followed by those of Philip, all who had children being treated as heads of families to which a family number is assigned.