READ ME
Main Page
Names/Links	Text		Hyperlinks
	Contents
	Introduction
	Use of this site
	Nationalities
	Surnames
	Numbering
	Hyperlinks
	Sections and Priorities
	Caveat
	Surname Overview
	Highlighting
	Italics
	Records Pages per family
	Trees
	Viewing
	Feedback
Introduction	The webpage ‘Ancestors of Chris R. Watts’ (at www.watts-yallop.org/main.htm) is an ordered list of all of my direct ancestors – those which I have so far been able to identify, with more or less certainty.
	It started out as a ‘Birth brief’ showing just myself, my parents, and my grandparents (all I knew at the time), and now contains all of the information necessary to construct a birth brief for any one of my direct ancestors from my grandparents onwards – so it is a sort of ‘Super-birth brief’. Information from the last 80 years or so is purposely deleted from this public version for privacy.
	It consists of, in principle, a single line per ancestor, with basic information pertaining to that person
Number	- number (see Numbering below)		Numbering
Name	- name of the ancestor, and if that ancestor appears more than once - a hyperlink to the other occurances (see Names below)		Names
Birth	- year of birth (or baptism), and hyperlink to the record of birth or baptism (see Highlighting below)		Highlighting
Birthplace	- birthplace (or place of baptism)
Profession	- rank, trade or profession
Marriage	- year of marriage, and hyperlink to the record of the marriage (see Highlighting below)		Highlighting
Licence	- hyperlink to the record of the marriage licence, if there was one
Spouse	- name of spouse, and hyperlink to the spouse's family in the list (use this to navigate around the page)
Mar_Place	- place of marriage
Death	- year of death (or burial), and hyperlink to the record of the death (see Highlighting below)		Highlighting
D_Place	- place of death (or burial)
Will_Admon	- hyperlink to the record of a will or administration
Obit	- hyperlink to obituary, monumental inscription, inquisition post mortem, etc.
Key_Docs	- hyperlinks to other key documents, photos or images
Lives	- hyperlink to a life histories. Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), History of Parliament (HoP), Wikipedia, etc.
Arms	- hyperlink to a coat of arms, if any
Proofs	- 'Proof' that this person was the parent of the next ancestor in line, and all other ancestors of mine down to me		Proofs
	- 'PP' if there is a 'proof' in the Records Page
	- 'P' if I believe there is a convincing paper trail (but haven't yet written it up)
	- a tick mark '✓' indicates that this has been confirmed via DNA by a match to a 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousin or similar).
Generation	- the number of generations back, counted from myself
Names	If an ancestor occurs more than once (e.g. cousins marry, so their grandparents occur twice), then there are two or more lines for that ancestor with identical information except, perhaps, the marriage information (or the name of the mother of their child if there was no marriage). As we are interested in genetic ancestors, we follow the natural parents of the child – our actual ancestors - usually husband and wife, but sometimes not. Note that if a child’s natural father had a different surname, the male line would show that discrepancy. This could be due to a birth out of wedlock, a change of name, an alias, an adoption, etc.
	The webpage is arranged by families – starting with my own (Watts), then my mother’s (Little), then my father’s mother’s (Greaves), then my mother’s mother’s (Buchan), then my father’s father’s mother’s (Otter), and so on. Each new family therefore begins with a female bringing in a new surname, followed by the male line of her family. With each new generation in that male line, a new family will start – if the mother and her maiden name can be identified.
Usage	The use of this site is free and unrestricted - on the understanding that if you find the site useful, and especially if you use it to enhance your own documentation or website, that you reference this site. Doing that will allow others to find this site, and may lead more people to contact me with feedback, corrections, or suggestions.
Nationalities	All of my grandparents were born in England, and had English ancestry, except one who was also about half Irish and a quarter Scot. Irish records being largely lost, the bulk of the records and families I have been able to trace are therefore English, with a dash of Scottish. The first ancestors of mine born outside the British Isles were Huguenots in the late 17th century, and the next were Italian and Flemish in the 16th.
Surnames	The Surname heading for a family is the name used at the time by its members, a modern English form of the name, or an approximation – except if there wasn’t one (e.g. patronymics were used, the family’s female descendant was known by another name in English, or they used different names, due to change of name, aliases, adoption of a mother’s name, etc.)
	This starts out badly, one might say, as my own paternal line has only been ‘Watts’ since the 1870s and was ‘Yallop’ before that (according to the paper trail - whic doesn't seem to be backed up by DNA...) See WikiTree for documentation on that topic (search for “James Pell Yallop”).
	A surname heading line may include hyperlinks to records (Records) for the family, family trees (Trees), or the family’s arms (A) – if they had them.
Numbering	Each individual is numbered in relation to me. I am number ‘1’ (natch), my father is ‘2’, my mother ‘3’, my father’s father ‘4’, my father’s mother ‘5’, my mother’s father ‘6’, my mother’s mother ‘7’, my father’s father’s father ‘8’, and so on. That is, for any individual ‘n’, their father is ‘2 times n’ (2n) and their mother is ‘2 times n, plus 1’ (2n+1). Males have even numbers, and females have odd.
	Each family starts with an odd number, and the numbers double with each generation in the male line.
	If there is more than one family with the same name, one uses the name (eg. Frost), and the others are given a unique label (eg. Frost45), in which case the family heading gives both designations as: "Frost       (Frost45)".
Hyperlinks	The Main page is the page I use for my own personal use – but with hyperlinks to private and copyrighted information removed (shown in grey). Hyperlinks from a certain point onwards are not present. The locations of these hyperlinks are still visible though, so anyone interested in a particular family can see where I think I have proof (contemporary record) for a particular event. I will progressively include the missing hyperlinks and supporting documentation (minus copyrighted content), with time.
	Hyperlinks attached to spouses jump to their family list.
	Hyperlinks attached to personal names (the second column) indicate an individual with more than one descent to me. These hyperlinks cycle through all of the occurrences for that individual in the Main page, but only one of those will continue with his ancestors, if known. The first such individual is Thomas Frost numbered 176 in Frost (11), and 180 in Frost (45).
	The hyperlinks allow easy navigation around the whole page, back and forth through the families using the ‘Spouse’ and ‘Name’ hyperlinks, and the ‘BACK’ button of your browser. Scrolling, and ‘Find’ also work, of course.
	Hyperlinks to supporting documentation go to the family's Records page. After taking a hyperlink from the Main page to a Records page, use the BACK button to return to the Main page. Likewise, after taking a hyperlink from a Records page to another location in that page or to another Records page, use the BACK button to return to the previous location.
	Please note that hyperlinks associated with marriages in the Records page will only work if the Records page for the wife’s family has been uploaded to the server. This is planned, but will take weeks or months…
	To find a descent from any person in this table to myself - find the person’s line in the webpage, then:
	1) follow the family table to that person’s youngest (female) descendant,
	2) click on her husband’s hyperlink,
	3) find him in his family table, and
	4) repeat 1) to 3), until my name appears.
	Clicking ‘BACK’ repeatedly takes you back to the starting point, and ‘forward’ repeatedly takes you back to myself.
Sections	The webpage is roughly divided into 4 sections (marked by horizontal red bars) corresponding to my personal priorities:
	Priority 1, Section 1
	Working back from the present day, I have tried - and continue to try - to identify every ancestor I can without exception, both male and female lines, documenting each step from public records – often reaching an impasse after a few generations as there are a fair number of labourers and tradesmen who are difficult or impossible to trace.
	This is shown by the graph (see hyperlink to the right) – I have identified all 16 of my 2 x great-grandparents, and 94% of my 3 x great-grandparents, but the percentage falls off quickly to less that 1% of my 11 x great-grandparents. This means that, after about 13 generations, we are tracing only a vanishingly small proportion of our whole body of ancestors…
	In several cases it is possible to trace back to the 17th century and even beyond – families which maintained a relatively high social standing, without a break, down to fairly recent times (leaving wills, deeds, court cases, etc.).
	Priority 2, Section 2
	In a few cases there are connections to prominent families of the 16th century (around the 13th  generation) such as: Clopton of Long Melford, Crymes, Rolle, Dacres etc. (merchants who made fortunes in London), some well-known ones such as  Cromwell, Bromley, Fortescue, and Savile, less well-known ones such as Blacker, Grice, Sothill and FitzWilliam in Yorkshire, and others. Some of these lead on to so many prominent (and traceable) families that I have had to choose which to follow. I have usually picked the ones with an interesting story to tell – a member of parliament, a well-known knight, interesting family property (e.g. Boarstall and its cartulary), interesting story (e.g. Clervaux proof of age), descent going back to the year ‘dot’ (in this case, the time of the Domesday Book, or thereabouts), etc.
	In this section I have mainly tried to either confirm existing genealogies (especially from Visitations or published family histories) or develop a genealogy for less prominent families for whom no established (or not obviously flawed) genealogy seems to exist. For this I have used contemporary documents (wills, inquisitions post-mortems, cartularies, calendared patent rolls, close rolls, fine rolls, etc., etc.) to find reasonably exact dates for births, deaths and marriages – where possible, and have checked these for plausibility (visible of the Main page). I have also used the lives from the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) and the History of Parliament (HoP) as proof, these being certainly at least as well-researched (and reviewed) as I anything I could hope to muster.
	Priority 3, Section 3
	The families above inevitably lead (around the 23th generation) to aristocratic families for which the DNB is the main source used, gaps being filled by contemporary documents where possible. This includes at least one reliable path back to Edward I (see Caveat), and multiple paths to his predecessors. This section neatly caps off the previous sections, and essentially stops at the Norman Conquest.
	Priority 4, Section 4
	This section includes any family whose last (female) member was born outside the British Isles. A lot of this section is historical record, and I have not tried to back it up myself from contemporary records, except in the odd case.
	And, as Edward I was certainly descended from Charlemagne many times over, I have not shied away from including a few paths back to him – especially as there are other descents from Charlemagne through non-regal families such as the counts of Saluzzo and the FitzAlans, the Marmions, etc. – and also, as anyone of European descent is inevitably descended from him.
Caveat	In case anyone should think that a descent over even 25 generations, say, can be ‘proved’ – estimates in our DNA-savvy world for the occurrence of non-parental events (false paternity, adoption, change-of-name, aliases, illegitimacy, wife pregnant on marriage, etc.) are around 1.5% per generation, and if one added only an additional 1% for possible errors in the paper trail (clerical error, deliberate falsification, incorrect identification of parent or child, incorrect deduction or relationships, etc.) – this would amount to only a 50% chance of being correct after so many generations. That is, all of this has to be taken with a serious grain of salt!
	On the other hand, it is mathematically certain that anyone with English ancestry living today is a descendant of Edward I - or any one else living at the time who has descendants living today. So, yes, I am claiming Edward I, Charlemagne and Edward the Great as my ancestors - but only on the basis of the number of generations and the math. An actual path back to them might possibly be one outlined in this table, but I wouldn't bet on it...
Overview	Near the top of the page, the ‘Surname Overview’ hyperlink calls up a mindmap showing all the surnames in the webpage and their relationships. Families that occur more than once (with branches giving multiple paths to an ancestor) are marked with an asterix.
	This mindmap is quite large and can only be read easily on a screen by zooming in several times and panning around the page.
Highlighting	Some personal reminders are included on this webpage:
Blue hyperlinks	Blue hyperlinks go to a trancript of an event or document in a Records page, and from there a hyperlink goes to a copy of the original document (normally greyed out, as it is private or copyrighted).
Red hyperlinks	Red hyperlinks go to a trancript of an event or document in a Records page, for which I have no copy, but do believe that the original exists.
Yellow shading	Dates shaded in yellow are events blocking further progress– an event that I haven’t found, haven’t been able to prove relevant, or seems to be missing from the records.
Green shading	Spouses shaded in green are presumably born outside Britain and usually haven’t been traced further.
Italics	Use of italics indicates tentative information – either not certain, speculation, or borrowed information from some secondary source. Information not in italics is backed up by public records (birth/marriage/death certificates, parish records, wills, etc.), which I and a small number of reviewers believe correspond to be correct (Caveat below).
Rec_Pages	The Main page includes hyperlinks to specific records for birth, marriage, death, will, etc., found in the Records page for that family (Records).
	Each Records page has columns for
	1) names – the locations to which hyperlink jump.
	2) Text - see below		Text
	3) hyperlinks to other records, or transcripts of wills or other documents,.
	4) names and numbers of the ancestors mentioned in the record. This is to aid comprehension for a reader not familiar with the family, and to allow searching for further records for: a person (name and number in brackets, e.g. ‘Robert (128)’ in the 1_Watts-Yallop_ Records page), or their family (number in brackets e.g. ‘(128)’ in the same page). This should also work for females – e.g. search for ‘Jemima (17)’ in the 17_Hudson_Records page down to her marriage in 1843, take the ‘James (16)’ hyperlink to the 1_Watts_ Records page, then continue searching for ‘Jemima (17)’ in that page down to her death in 1920.
	5) hyperlinks to copies of original of wills or other documents which are private or copyrighted, and are not active in the public pages.
Text	Each Records page has sections for
	1) Introduction to the family
	2) Tracing the family - how the information was found, if that might be of interest to others, or if how it was found partially constitutes proof
Proofs	3) Proofs - per person, based on the idea that to 'prove' that person B is the parent of person A, one first has to know about A's life - birth, marriage, children, relatives, working life, locations, death, etc. including records of age, and those all being reasonably consistent, also the names of A's parents.
	Then the 'proof' for B, will start with the birth of A, and review B's life - births of other children, marriage, relatives, working life, locations, death, etc. including records of age, and those all being reasonably consistent, also the names of B's parents.
Records	4) Records - each record consists of
	1) date – precise down to the day, or approximate, perhaps followed by a range such as ‘1424x34’ for ‘1424 to 1434’. The date is given in the format YYYY-MM.DD, with the year always starting on the first of January. Dates for years before 1754, when the new year started on March 25, are silently converted to this standard format for simplicity in handling and automatic sorting.
	2) event – birth, marriage, death, will, census, court case, etc.
	3) source.
	4) key people involved, key words.
	5) the actual text of the record (summary, transcript, etc.).
Trees	The main page includes hyperlinks to family trees (Trees). These are in PDF files which can be kept open along with the Main or Records pages.
	The trees are divided into A4 horizontal sheets with 4 generations per sheet. For Greaves (5) for example, they start at ‘5-1 Greaves’ with the latest female ancestor of mine in the bottom row - Helen Myra Greaves (5), alongside her siblings. The next row above shows her father alongside his siblings, and so on. Ancestors are shown in bold. Spouses are shown below the members of the family shown, and if they too are ancestors - their numbers hyperlink to other trees, e.g. Myra Frost (11) to ’11-1 Frost’. Other hyperlinks such as ‘(-2)’ refer to another sheet for the same family, in this case ‘5-2 Greaves’. The sheet ‘5-1 Greaves’ shows generations 1 to 4 of the family, ‘5-2 Greaves’ generations 5 to 8, and so on, as far as known. Unsure information is indicated by italics, question marks, c. or ca., or similar.
	The public version of the main page accesses only the most important family tree pages, usually those showing direct ancestors – so some hyperlinks reference pages which are presently not available on-line.
	If a family tree stretches to 5 generations, and only one or two names are known in the 5th generation, these may be included in the top left corner of the first (and only) page.
Viewing	The main page is quite wide and long, so a large computer screen is preferable to view it comfortably. A 27” screen is best, or even two 27” screens - so trees, records and/or the main page can be viewed together.
	It is, though, just possible to navigate around the main page on an iPhone 5S, for instance, by zooming in so that the ‘Name’ and ‘Name of Spouse’ columns are on either side of the screen in landscape orientation. Records can then be accessed via the hyperlinks, and most or all of most records will be legible on the screen without adjustment.
Feedback	This webpage is very much a work in progress, and feedback from YOU would be greatly appreciated. There is a hyperlink at the top of the webpage for general feedback.
	Nothing is sacred, so any correction, discussion, addition or confirmation of any part would be welcome (including typos, cut-and-paste errors, faulty hyperlink, obvious contradictions or inconsistencies, etc.) Even if a large portion of this page turned out to be totally unconnected to myself (hopefully not the case), it would be a pity - but researching it has in any case been so interesting as a personal slant on the history of England and beyond, and has posed so many challenging puzzles over the years – that not much would be lost…
	© C. R. Watts 2020 created 10.12.2019, revised 08.04.2023
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