The System of Organization of the Family Tree


(Some exerts from the book "The Linkous Family History Expanded" by Clovis Linkous)


In a collection of related individuals of this scope, a graphical system of showing relationships is cumbersome to an impossible degree. Therefore, some coded system of tabulation is necessary.

The system I have selected assigns a unique number to each descendent. There is one digit for each generation down from the common progenitor, Henry Linkous in our case. A particular individual carries the number of his parents plus an additional digit for his/her own generation. IDEALY, the digit for one's own generation is the order of birth; that is, the first born gets a "1" and the second born gets a "2" and so on.

For EXAMPLE, Henry had 9 children so they are numbered 1 through 9. John was Henry's first child so he is called number "1". Abraham was the 4th child of John, so his number is "14". Charles Miller Linkous was the 3rd child of Abraham, so his number is "143". This provides us with a meaningful system of tabulation. There may be more than one "Charles Miller Linkous" by name, but only this one will have the number,"143".

The parents of the family are listed with the blood descendant of Henry Linkous listed first with his/her number. Under the parents are listed all the children with their complete number. Also listed, when available, for each child are the following:

Year of birth
Year of death
Year of marriage
Spouse's name (maiden if a female)
Spouse's year of birth
Spouse's year of death

By having parents, brothers and sisters, dates and spouses all listed together, one has much more than just a name for identification.

The order of presentation is in the order of ascending numbers. Thus, all of a particular generation is presented before beginning the presentation of the next generation. If a descendant had offspring, then that descendant will appear twice, once as a child and in the next generation as a parent.

A word of caution! It was my desire to number each child in the order of their birth. Unfortunately, the order of birth is not always known, but a number must be assignrd anyway. This has been done in these cases in an arbitrary manner. Many times, after this arbitrary assignment, the year of birth has become available and the numbers are found to be different from the order of birth. Mostly, I have not reorganized the numbers after the new information became available because it was too much work and too error prone. Many times it would have involved changing the numbers of hundreds of people in succeeding generations. The good news is that I have always included the dates when they became available, so if one were the first born but does not have a "1", the date will tell that the person was first born.

Beneath the listing of children of a set of parents, I have desired to include a few items of personal information on the parents, such as where they lived, their occupation, or pehaps a tale about them. Unfortunately, this desire has only been possible for a small percentage of the parents because the information has not been available.

Children with a record of only a single parent have been a big problem for me. One cannot know for sure what the record means. It may have occurred by the death of a parent, dovorce, desertion, or possible by the child being born to parents who were not married. The listing of a single parent does not necessarily mean tha it was an unwed situation.


If you have information to share, or see any mistakes in the Linkous / Linkes family history, please let us know as we are human to error. Contact me by E-mail


The information used from the book, "The Linkous Family History Expanded," on this website is Copyright 1997 by Clovis E. Linkous
All rights reserved.
Permisssion to reproduce in any form must be secured from the author.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 97-74305



The LINKES/LINKOUS Family History Homepage.

Second Generation of Henry Linkous.

Descendants of John Barnett Linkous.