A UNIVERSAL CARD SYSTEM FOR 

 FAMILY PEDIGREES 



Howard J. Banker 

 Eugenics Record Office, Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y. 



PRACTICALLY every genealogist 

 has his own method for keeping 

 track of the ramifications of the 

 family network with which his studies 

 are concerned. The inventions are 

 numerous and sometimes remarkable 

 and each worker is prone to believe 

 that his own device is the best, or at 

 least he has become so entangled in 

 his system that it is impracticable for 

 him to make any change. 



Some of these schemes are too com- 

 plicated or even bizarre to be of use 

 to anyone but the inventor, others are 

 cumbersome and unwieldy for ready 

 reference, nearly all possess a degree 

 of rigidity that materially limits their 

 usefulness. Charting systems on any 

 extended scale are cumbersome, permit 

 little interpolation, and are limited to 

 special lines of research. While of 

 great value within their limitations 

 for depicting final results, they are 

 impracticable for use as a working 

 guide for the general genealogist, ex- 

 cept in very restricted fields. Systems 

 of numbering are popular and these 

 are highly efficient in certain cases. 

 They are often devised to permit in- 

 definite expansion and interpolation 

 as the work proceeds and are simple 

 to manipulate, but their use is re- 

 stricted to special phases of genealog- 

 ical research. One system of number- 

 ing is used for tracing ancestral lines, 

 while a different system must be em- 

 ployed for lines of descent, and I 

 know of no such system that will pro- 

 vide for all the lines of collateral 

 relationship. 



Believing there are many who are 

 striving to find some more satisfac- 

 tory method of ready reference that 

 will guide them through all the laby- 



rinth of family relationships, this 

 paper has been written, trusting that 

 the experience of the writer may be of 

 some value to others. When we con- 

 sider the complications in family rela- 

 tionships that may and often do arise 

 from intermarriages, it is evident that 

 no system can be devised that will be 

 so simple that it will not require some 

 study in its application. In other words, 

 it is not possible to make such a sys- 

 tem so mechanically perfect that it 

 will be "fool-proof." 



After years of practical work, the 

 writer has developed what he believes 

 to be the simplest possible system 

 applicable to large and complicated 

 family pedigrees. It is a card system 

 capable of any amount of interpola- 

 tion or expansion, and yet permitting 

 at all times the ready tracing of the 

 relationship of every individual to 

 every other, if the connecting links 

 have been properly recorded. In fact, 

 it is conceivable that a genealogist 

 specializing in some locality, could 

 build up such a system that would 

 furnish him with a complete synopsis 

 and ready reference index to every 

 family and individual in his field. 

 Theoretically, if accurate data could be 

 obtained, the entire human race could 

 be included in a single, though enor- 

 mous, system of related cards. Indeed, 

 every collection of cards on this plan 

 is a fragment of such a universal 

 system, hence I have called this a 

 "Universal Card System." If the plan 

 were generally adopted and consistent- 

 ly maintained, it would be possible 

 eventually to combine the card collec- 

 tions of many independent workers, 

 without any change, into a single 

 series. The only disadvantage being 



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