Have you created a sternaine table to help you research your
DNA or even your genealogical family lines? If you haven't,
then let's create one today.
Howdy, I'm Devon Noel Lee and this is Family History
Fanatics. Over on our blog that you can find at blog that
Family History Fanatics. com, I shared a blog post about
creating a surname table for my family. Today's video is
sponsored by Medicare Supplements Plus and as
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Now, back to the topic. I was inspired by my husband Andy
creating this surname table for his family and I wanted to give
it a go to create a surname table for myself. One of our
readers said, I don't quite understand how you made that
table. So, today, I'm going to walk you through the process of
creating a surname table from scratch. So, the first thing
you're going to do is to open up a spreadsheet and create a
table that is five columns wide by seventeen rows deep. Now,
the first row is going to be the title, surname title. You
can get creative and say Devin's surname table or
whatever you want. So, the first row across all five
columns is the title surname table. Then, you're going to go
and label the first column, the generations of the names that
you're going to include. The first row is going to be your
grandparents. There's really no need to start with your
parents. Go ahead and hop to your grandparents and you will
list your four surname lines in that row and then the next row
which is actually going to be another single row is going to
be your first great grandparents and I'll explain
more how that takes place why there's one more row of names
and then the next group is actually going to be two rows
combined together. That'll be your second great grandparents
then the next grouping is going to be your third grade
grandparents and there will be four rows for that and then the
remaining rows will be your fourth grade grandparents. The
last group will be all of the remaining rows grouped together
and that will be your fourth grade grandparents. Now, column
two will be your father's father's surname line. Column
three is going to be your father's mother's surnames, all
of her surnames. The column four is going to be your
mother's father's surname list and then the last column you
guessed it is going to be your mother's mother's surnames. So,
let's put that together. Now, I'm going to use FamilySearch
in order to point out where their names come from because I
really like their fan chart and it helps me grab the names
quickly but you could use any program in order to capture
your family names. So, these are my parents. These are my
grandparents and I'm going to grab these four last names.
Geisler, Zempstein Brown, and Long. Now, Long is actually my
grandmother's adopted last name and whenever you have an
adoption, what you want to do is it's put a mark of some
kind. So, this is my grandmother. Her her adopted
last name is Long. I'm not entirely sure what her
biological father's name was and what her should be. So,
Long is going to be an asterisk to let me know I really don't
need to be looking for longs but then you see the Geissler,
Zemsteins, and Browns. Back to our table. Now, for the next
show, the first great grandparents, I don't need to
get Geissler, Zempstein, Brown, and then the blank because
they're already on my chart. From here on out, I'm just
going to add a Additional surnames that are the maiden
names that join into the tree. So, Peak, Comfort, Townsend,
this is blank because I don't know what it is and Anderson.
Let's see how that looks. So, there's Peak, Comfort,
Townsend, and Anderson because these are all the maiden
surnames that married this line. Does that make sense? If
it doesn't, put a question in the comments below. Now, back
to the chart, we're going to go to the second great
grandparents. Again, I don't need Geisler, Peak, Zemstein,
Comfort because they're already on that chart. I'm just
going to pick up the additional maiden surnames which is Hopey,
Townley, Snyder, Mar, Gordon, Claybaugh, I have to skip and
then finally, Sparks. So, here's that blank. Anytime
there's a blank, what that means is I don't know what that
surname is. So, I will have blanks perpetuated in this line
obviously because I'm going to have more blanks being that
that biological father's line is not known. We're going to go
back one more generation and in this fan chart, I actually have
to move my father's side, the fraternal line to the center
spot in order to pick up these additional last names. So, at
this point, I won't pick up these last names. So, I'm going
to grab Mack, KLarlsberger, Stone, Sexton, and the rest and
that's what this is what it looks like now. Anytime you
have spelling variations and maybe an angular size name. Go
ahead and put the two versions of the last name right there.
So we have Shafely and Shafely the two ways that last name is
known to be spelled. Now I'm going to move to one more
position back on the fan chart and I will pick up this section
of the family. When I get to the Geiszlers, I can't go back
one more generation. I don't know who they are. So, now I
have a blank then I'm going to add Tenopel and then I have
Maria and I don't know where her last name is even though I
have a first name for for Maria. It's going to be blank
because I don't know her last name because I'm working in
FamilySearch, it is a collaborative tree and when I
started creating my surname table, this king last name is a
new to me individual that I know I need to go and research
even further. So, while I'm creating my surname table, I'm
going to go ahead and make a mark that says, yeah, I'm not
sure if this is a relative or not but it's something to put
on here to investigate. So, if you ever have a last name
that's new to you that might actually be a biological
relative then you want to want to make an indication on your
surname when there's some questions that need further an
investigation. Let's see what that looks like. As you can see
in this generation, I did not know what the maiden name for
the Geiszler spouse was and then I had a Karlsberger but I
didn't know who he married. So, I her last name, I knew her
first name was Maria and so therefore, I went ahead and put
a blank here. So, you blanks in the spots that related going
around that fan to individuals where you don't know who they
are at all or you don't know what their surname is. Now, I
can go back to FamilySearch move positions on the tree and
then pick up the fourth great grandparents of my father's
mother's lines and again, there's a blank because I don't
know what the maiden name of this individual is and you just
can keep hopping around your family tree adding names and
leaving spaces when you don't know what the last names are
for the maiden names and you can see so I went Anderson
Sparks Weekly Simons and McCartney so I'm doing pretty
good there but because I have that biological unknown father
and some additional families that I don't know what their
last names are that's why there's so many blanks in that
place so what this surname is useful for is if I find matches
that I believe to be the Geisler Zumstein family, I can
quickly pull up these surnames and say, do any of these
surnames sound familiar to you and in fact, I did discover
someone who is through the Hopey line, the H O P P E line.
Recently, he said, I really don't know that that far back
but when I saw his last name, Hopey, I was able to tell him,
oh, I know so much about your family. So, this surname tree
was useful in that family line but when I'm finding people
that match my mother's side of the tree when they match my
aunts and my brother and myself then I know that it's my
mother's side of the tree and I can share some of the names of
the individuals that I have there, it's going to be harder
to match people based on those surnames because I have so many
blanks but at least I have a start. Now, if you happen to
have a family where they decide to completely change their name
from, we're not talking about spelling it brown without an E
to brown with an E but we're talking about they take the
name Garnet and then it becomes Lee in the generation that that
last name changes completely from one to the other, that's
when you're going to go ahead add that additional last name
and then, these are all going to be blank because it's
just this last name that changed and it applied to that
surname. So, you could probably put some Xs in here to help you
remember that you don't need some additional surnames. There
was a total change from one last name to something that's
completely different. Um you can go ahead and add those
names because from this point onward, we're looking for and
from this point onward, we're looking for the last name Lee.
So, if you ever have a name change, that's one of the ways
you can handle that. Before we wrap up this video, we want to
say thank you to our sponsors Medicare Supplements Plus. They
have been in business for over 20 years and guess what? Chet
is a genealogist who's traced his family lines back to
Poland. So, when you give him a call, not only can Ted and Chet
at Medicare Supplements Plus help you with your Medicare
plans, You might also discover that they are your cousin. So,
did that help you figure out how to create a surname table
for your DNA research and you can also use it in your
genealogical research. I hope it does. If you have any
further questions, put them in the comment section below and
if you want to see how we create any other tools, be they
for genealogy or for DNA research, make sure you let us
know what you would like to see on this channel at info at
Family History Fanatics. com.