F of France
I of Ireland
S of Scotland
UK of United Kingdom
HRE of the Holy Roman Empire
J+letter Jacobite of country concerned
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Tree & Family HistoryFamily Section: Abbreviations & Layout
The family histories are unique for each and their size and detail depend on how much information I have to hand. However, when it came to the genealogies section it was obvious that some sort of standard layout would make things easier. I have thus tried to impose some sort of order onto the genealogical section. I hope that the example below will explain how I've done things, and the list of abbreviations will make the deciphering of dates and the like more easy.
Layout
| Name of the Dempster concerned with birth/death dates | ||||||
| ~ 1 First Spouse with date of marriage | ||||||
| ~ 2 Further spouses with date of marriage | ||||||
| Children usually in order of birth, listed below their mother/father | ||||||
| Second child > Link forward in time to another genealogy | ||||||
| Third child > with link forward | ||||||
| Fourth child | ||||||
| ~ first spouse of that child | ||||||
| ~ second spouse of that child > there was issue | ||||||
| # Known parent of illegitimate children | ||||||
STYLES, ABBREVIATIONS and SYMBOLS USED.
At the cost of being anachronistic, a consistent style has been applied to the designations of persons in this work, especially spouses.
Peers have been styled as Firstname + Surname, nth Title e.g. James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell.
Children of peers have been styled as they would be today, thus Hon. is used for the sons and daughters of Lords. This is incorrect for much of the period, but helpful in tracing the ancestry of a spouse.
As a further help, daughters of all degrees have been styled as "of" their father's estate, e.g. Lady Anne Stewart of Atholl, Elizabeth Cavendish of Cavendish. The only exception to this rule is for daughters of the Earls Marischal of Scotland who are designated Keith-Marischal, which is NOT a multi-part family name.
Males are similarly given their territorial designations when appropriate and if they are the younger sons of peers the peerage title is given in parentheses.
The only time that the subsidiary titles "Master of X" or "younger of X" are used is when the son did not live inherit the dignity of X, or in some cases, where the dignity was forfeited.
Where the family name is not given it can be assumed to be Dempster, where the name changed from Dempster by reasons of spelling, inheritance or illegitimacy, it is given in bold italics.
The following symbols and abbreviations have been used
| ~ married | # mistress or handfasted wife (descendants considered illegitimate) | aft definitely after this date |
| bef. definitely before this date | c. circa | cr. title created |
| d died | ex. executed | fl+date flourished i.e. known to be alive at that date |
| k. killed in battle | murd. murdered | date+X+date event happened between two dates given |
| > Had issue | > FAMILY link forward in time to family mentioned | < FAMILY link back in time to family mentioned |
| [letter, J+letter] peerage / baronetage &c of a particular country | E of England
F of France I of Ireland S of Scotland UK of United Kingdom |
GB of Great Britain
HRE of the Holy Roman Empire J+letter Jacobite of country concerned |
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© James Dempster 1997