GENEALOGY | Henry Method of Numbering

The two main starting points of genealogical organization are "Pedigrees", which start with a person, probably living, and working backward, and "Family Groups", which start with an ancestor, commonly the earliest one identifiable, and work forward.

The topic is–what is best practice? The criteria I use are two, simplicity and sortability:

Simplicity. A numbering system should require the fewest keystrokes possible.

Sortability.  A numbering system should be sortable using standard sorting routines, which sort numbers first and then letters. Staff members of the Society of Genealogists in London told me that the Roman numerals are becoming less favored because they are impossible to sort by computer using standard alphanumeric sorting algorithms.

Pedigrees – Ascending Numbering Systems – The Ahnentafel

The Ahnentafel. Ahnentafel is German for "ancestor table". This numbering is also known as the Eytzinger Method or Sosa or Sosa-Stradonitz Method. It allows for the numbering of ancestors beginning with a descendant. It is a simple and sortable system.

The principle is simply that the number of people in each generation doubles. So if we start with ourself, there are 2 parents, 4 grandparents etc. So the number of a person's father is the double of their own number, and the number of a person's mother is the double of their own, plus one. For instance, if the number of John Smith is 10, his father is 20, and his mother is 21.

The first 15 numbers, identifying individuals in 4 generations, are as follows:
(First Generation)
1 Subject
(Second Generation)
2 Father
3 Mother
(Third Generation)
4 Father's father
5 Father's mother
6 Mother's father
7 Mother's mother
(Fourth Generation)
8 Father's father's father
9 Father's father's mother
10 Father's mother's father
11 Father's mother's mother
12 Mother's father's father
13 Mother's father's mother
14 Mother's mother's father
15 Mother's mother's mother.

Ahnentafel with generation. To show each person's generation, the ahnentafel numbering may be preceded by the generation number, just an added column in a table. It is unnecessary, but could be useful. It is sortable.
(First Generation)
1-1 (01-001) Subject
(Second Generation)
2-2 (02-002) Father
2-3 (02-003) Mother
(Third Generation)
3-4 (03-004) Father's father
3-5 (03-005) Father's mother
3-6 (03-006) Mother's father
3-7 (03-007) Mother's mother

Family Group Numbering (Descending) – Defects

Existing numbering systems for family groups have problems of simplicity or sortability.

Register System

The Register System was created in 1870 for use in the New England Historic and Genealogical Register published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, in Boston, Mass. It uses both common numerals (1, 2, 3, 4) and Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv). Problem: Roman numerals violate the principle of sortability.

(Generation One)
1 Progenitor
2 i Child
   ii Child (no progeny)
   iii Child (no progeny)
3 iv Child
(Generation Two)
2 Child
   i Grandchild (no progeny)
   ii Grandchild (no progeny)
3 Child
4 i Grandchild
(Generation Three)
4 Grandchild
5   i Great-grandchild
    ii Great-grandchild (no progeny)
6 iii Great-grandchild
7 iv Great-grandchild

NGSQ System

The NGSQ System is named for the National Genealogical Society Quarterly published by the National Genealogical Society in Arlington, Virginia, which uses the method in its articles. It is sometimes called the "Record System" or the "Modified Register System" because it derives from the Register System. The main difference is in the method of numbering for children who are not carried forward into future generations. Problem: It uses Roman numerals and plus signs and therefore violates the rule of sortability.

(Generation One)
1 Progenitor
 + 2 i Child
    3 ii Child (no progeny)
   4 iii Child (no progeny)
 +5 iv Child
(Generation Two)
2 Child
    6 i Grandchild (no progeny)
    7 ii Grandchild (no progeny)
5 Child
 + 8 i Grandchild
(Generation Three)
8 Grandchild
 +  9 i Great-grandchild
    10 ii Great-grandchild (no progeny)
 + 11 iii Great-grandchild
 + 12 iv Great-grandchild

d'Aboville System

The d'Aboville System is a descending numbering method developed by Jacques d'Aboville in 1940 that is very similar to the Henry System, widely used in France. This is the system that Thijs Boissevain used for his extensive Boissevain Family Group with thousands of names. Periods are used to separate the generations.  No changes in numbering are needed for families with more than nine children. Problem: The periods are unnecessary if a system is treated for numbering children beyond nine. It violates the rule of simplicity.
1 Progenitor
1.1 Child
1.1.1 Grandchild
1.1.1.1 Great-grandchild
1.1.1.2 Great-grandchild
1.1.2 Grandchild
1.2 Child
1.2.1 Grandchild
1.2.1.1 Great-grandchild
1.2.2 Grandchild
1.2.2.1 Great-grandchild
1.2.3 Grandchild
... etc. to
1.2.9 Grandchild
1.2.10 Grandchild

Henry System

The Henry System is a descending system created by Reginald Buchanan Henry for a genealogy of the families of the presidents of the United States that he wrote in 1935. It can be organized either by generation or not. The system begins with 1. The oldest child becomes 11, the next child is 12, and so on. The oldest child of 11 is 111, the next 112, and so on. The system allows one to derive an ancestor's relationship based on their number. For example, 621 is the first child of 62, who is the second child of 6, who is the sixth child of his parents. In the Henry System, when there are more than nine children, X is used for the 10th child, A is used for the 11th child, B is used for the 12th child, and so on. In the Modified Henry System, when there are more than nine children, numbers greater than nine are placed in parentheses. Problem: The progression X, A, B and the use of parentheses in the modified system do not sort correctly using standard sorting routines.

Other Systems

The Meurgey de Tupigny System uses Roman numerals for generations. Problem: Violates rule of sortability.

The de Villiers/Pama System gives letters to generations, and then numbers children in birth order. Problem: It violates rule of simplicity: The letters in this case are unnecessary and duplicative.

Suggested Solution

Use the Henry System but start numbering the 10th child A, the 11th B and so forth. This makes it sortable.

BOISSEVAIN | B. Walking 20th C. Amsterdam

The lines for the Anne Frank House are shortest in
the evening, so the walking tour might best begin at
the high number and work down.

The buildings that housed the offices of Boissevain businesses before World War II were not destroyed during the war, one of the few consolations of the German Occupation.

A Boissevain family reunion is planned for the spring of 2016, preferably not during a vacation when school children will be visiting Amsterdam museums in large numbers.

I have suggested a walking tour on the map at left to visit some of the sites with family associations to the west and south of the Dam - I apologize for my inadequate map-annotating skills.

It would take about two hours for a group just to visit sites 2-10, without taking into account time spent inside.

At the last stop, the Amsterdam Stadsarchief offers sandwiches, coffee and fruit juices for sale.

Special exhibits of Boissevain or van Hall-related books or archives might be arranged at NIOD or the Stadsarchief, or both.

The tour is marked as starting at 0 - the Anne Frank House, and then proceeding toward the Royal Palace via 1 - the Raadhuisstraat. But probably these should be left for a different day. Getting tickets to the Anne Frank House has to be arranged well in advance and unless the group goes together there is no point in assembling at the House. The tour should probably begin with 2, behind the Palace.

The Buildings Near the Palace

The noodle place that used to print Het Parool.
All photos by JT Marlin, Feb. 19, 2015.

2 - #160 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal - the printer of Het Parool. This is now a noodle restaurant with rooms upstairs for rent. The stairs at the left of the entrance may have led up to the printing room. Printers made stencils that were then used to create plates for the presses. Since the printing press is gone, there isn't much to see inside, so this is strictly a starting point. The hotel at 3 may be a better one to assemble in.

Now an upscale hotel, this building used to serve
meals to workers and is where the armed
 CS6 group met.

3 - #178-180 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, a few doors down, was the workers'  soup kitchen where CS6 members met, led by Gi and Janka Boissevain. After killing many traitors, Ji and Janka became the Nazis' Most Wanted; they were both caught and were shot in the dunes at Overveen. They are buried next each other and their cousin Louis in the Eeregraafsplaats Bloemendaal. Their father was the first to be arrested and he died in Buchenwald. Their mother Mies Boissevain and the youngest son Frits also went to concentration camps but survived. Mies after the war promoted the "Festival Skirt" as a way of proactively making fashionable what clothing that was available. The skirt became a symbol of rebuilding Holland. One is on display at the Verzetsmuseum near the Artis Zoo. The plaque on the wall at #178-#180 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal reads (my translation from the Dutch):

This plaque is located to the right of the entrance to the
hotel at #178-#180 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal.

During the German Occupation 1940-1945 / in these buildings, a foundation, / Central Commercial Kitchens for Amsterdam South of the Ij River, / prepared 4.734 million liters of meals on behalf of workers / for Amsterdam industrial companies.

That would mean about one million liters for each year of the occupation. If the soup kitchen was open 250 days per year, that would mean 4,000 liters per day.

One can speculate how the 4,000 liters were consumed. A 12-ounce bowl of soup with 300 calories is about one-third of a liter - with a slice of bread, half a liter. So the kitchen may have been serving 8,000 meals per day. During the hunger winter in the last year of the war, the portions would have been much smaller.

The old Handelsblad building now has an art
 gallery on the ground floor.

4 - #240 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal - The Algemeen Handelsblad name is blazoned in stone across the entrance (the building now houses an avant-garde gallery). The newspaper was made famous at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th by Charles Boissevain, but he and his wife Emily died before World War II. Like all the other big newspapers, such as De Telegraaf, the wartime editors of the newspaper complied with Nazi censorship because they didn't want to lose their jobs (or their lives). It was a blow for the reputation of the Handelsbad that it went along with the censorship. However, the 1,300 upstart underground newspapers and many thousands of family and business newsletters doubtless got help from regular journalists - a story that would be interesting to tell if there were anyone left to tell it. The Dutch people also regularly listened to radio broadcasts from the Queen in London, although it was strictly forbidden and all radios were confiscated. Bob Boissevain turned in one radio to the Nazis and listened in to the other one.

Muntplein

Skipping down to the Muntplein at the southern end of the Kalverstraat, Amsterdam's brand-name shopping street, we have three sites to visit.

Tobacco company at 118 Nes that hid people in the basement.

5 - #380 Herengracht - NIOD. Everyone interested in the Resistance should be aware of NIOD, which has a huge library as well as archives and a professional staff to look after them. For example, both NIOD and the Amsterdam Stadsarchief have complete sets of the 18-volume history (in Dutch only) of World War II by Louis (Loe) de Jong. The Verzetsmuseum near the Artis Zoo has some books but they are not organized like a library, more like a used book sale, whereas NIOD's books are well organized. More about NIOD.

6 - #118 Nes was a tobacco company that hid people in the basement. This basement at least had windows. Across the road is the "Tobacco Theater".

The former central bank of the Netherlands, now the Allard
Pierson Museum. This is where the audacious robbery of
Treasury bills took place to fund the Resistance.

7 - #127 Oude Turfmarkt - De Nederlandsche Bank, Holland's Central Bank, was the target of a huge bank robbery engineered by the kindly Wally van Hall, who carried off an exchange of counterfeit Treasury bills and banknotes in the region of $500 million in today's money. He kept excellent records so we can probably find out the exact number. In addition, he raised an equivalent amount in gifts and loans from Dutch individuals and institutions.

Rembrandtplein and Stadsarchief

The tour goes to the Rembrandtplein, where picture-taking in front of the sculptures around the front of Rembrandt's statue is an option.

This used to be the Rembrandt Theater, where the Dutch
Nazis went in the evening. CS6 set fire to it.  

8 - #21-23 Rembrandtplein - The Rembrandt Theater used to be here and it is where the Dutch Nazi Party used to meet. Hitler tried to make Rembrandt the Dutch equivalent of Wagner - a symbol of the artistic cleverness of the Dutch branch of the Master Race. It didn't work. Holland never supported Hitler in very large numbers - according to Loe de Jong, no more than 1.5 percent of the population of Holland supported the Dutch Nazi movement (de Jong, 1988, 33). CS6 burned down the Rembrandt Theater. It is now the NH Caransa Hotel.

The statue of Rembrandt with sculptures of some of the
people he painted. Hitler wanted Rembrandt to be the
Dutch equivalent of Wagner -  an illustration of what the
Master Race can do. The Dutch didn't buy it. At. All.

9 - #32 Vijzelstraat - Amsterdam Stadsarchief - crossing the Herengracht and going west one street to Vijzelstraat, we are at the last stop, the Amsterdam Stadsarchief, which has several interesting features. Many Boissevain family and van Hall family papers are archived here and could be displayed for the family. In addition, the building used to be the headquarters of a bank that the Boissevain family was heavily invested in and at which individuals were represented on the staff and board. The building itself is of unusual interest architecturally because many environmentally interesting features were built into the design. It was the ABN AMRO headquarters until they moved to a more modern building. At the family reunion a few years ago we were given an architectural  tour of the Stadsarchief.

Sources (in addition to my having walked the route):

de Jong, Louis (Loe). The Netherlands and Nazi Germany. The Erasmus Lectures at Harvard. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.

van Tol, Ineke. Persecution and Resistance in Amsterdam, 2006. A walk from the Anne Frank House to the Verzetsmuseum. Reviewed by Liesbeth van der Horst and Ruud Lindeman of the Verzetsmuseum, Erik Somers of NIOD and Hans Westra of the Anne Frank Stichting.  English version translated by Maneke Piggott. Sold by the Verzetsmuseum.

Other Posts:

I have been posting stories and information and sources about the Boissevain family in World War II. They are in the form of chapters of a book.

A walking tour of 19th Century Boissevains in Amsterdam is here.

WW2 | Documentary Sources for the Dutch Resistance (Updated Feb. 29, 2016)

Loe de Jong (1914-2005), author of
 the official history of World War II in
Holland. He had high praise for Wally
van Hall.

The starting point for this book was my mother's death in 2006 and my appointment as her executor. I have been attempting to promote her two books of fiction about the Nazi Occupation of Holland, with special reference to the Boissevain and van Hall families. Her books were based on stories from the war told by family members and friends.

These two books are listed below under fiction. They are under discussion for a television miniseries and I have a time-limited option with someone to develop this. Meanwhile, independently, a cousin asked me if I could document what our Dutch relatives did to help the Resistance.

Memoirs and Non-Fiction Books

de Jong, Louis (Loe), History of World War II in Holland (in Dutch only, 14 volumes, 18,000 words), published by NIOD. This is the most authoritative book on World War II in Holland. A copy of the complete set is available on open shelving at NIOD and at the Amsterdam Archief. Loe de Long was by and large a "dry" scholar, wary of overstatement, but he had the highest praise for Wally van Hall.

Deál, István, Europe on Trial: The Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution During World War II (Westview, 2015). This book covers the resistance or collaboration throughout Europe. His divisions of the war periods and of the responses of the people in different countries is useful.

Encyclopedia Britannica entries on Gestapo, etc.

Flim, Bert Jan, Opportunities for Dutch Jews to Hide from the Nazis, 1942-1945.

Friedhoff, Herman, Requiem for the Resistance: The Civilian Struggle against Nazism in Holland and Germany, Bloomsbury, 1988. This is a highly personal memoir of the author's experiences working with the Dutch Resistance during the war. He has a limited perspective on what was happening but what he does describe is useful.

Hilberg, Raul, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: the Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945.

Lochner, Louis P., ed., The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-43, Doubleday, 1948. Goebbels had strong opinions about the Dutch people and their lack of enrollment in Hitler's dreams.

Marlin, Randal (grandson of Olga Boissevain van Stockum; Department of Philosophy, Carleton University, Ottawa), Propaganda and the Art of Persuasion, 2nd edition (Broadview, 2013). My brother's book is gathering steam as a bible of students of propaganda.

NIOD, Dutch Jews as Perceived by Themselves and Others.

They Choose for Resistance, book in Dutch about Gi and Janka Boissevain.

Schaap, Erik, Walraven van Hall, in Dutch. The book is priced at €24.95, plus shipping. Schaap, who lives in Zaandam, has also written a book in Dutch about the early days of the Resistance in the Netherlands.

Books–Fiction

The top Young Adult books on Goodreads.com have some useful backgrounds to or perspectives on  the nonfiction detail that I am assembling. Two of the books among the top five are by my mother (rankings are as of January 2015; they are updated by Goodreads every 5 minutes). The top three were all made into movies. My mother's writing about the Nazi Occupation of Holland preoccupied her for three decades after the end of World War II.

• #1. The Book Thief (2005). Written by an Australian, this is about a 13-year-old German girl, Liesel, growing up in a suburb of Munich in World War II. Her foster father Hans takes in a Jewish man whose father fought with Hans in World War I. In 2013 it was made into a movie.
• #2. The Diary of Anne Frank (1942-44, first published in Dutch in 1947). This diary is the authentic story in her own words of a girl growing up in the Jewish ghetto of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. She did not survive the war, but her father Otto did and had the diary published. There have been several movies based on the book. Here is one entire 1 hour 36-minute movie.
• #3. Number the Stars (1989). This is the story of a 10-year-old Danish girl during the Nazi Occupation, and the escape of a Jewish family from Copenhagen. This book has been made into a movie that won prizes for historical fiction.
• #4. The Winged Watchman (1962) tells the story of the Nazi Occupation from the perspective of two Dutch boys aged 10 and 14 living in a rural windmill. The two boys become involved in the Resistance. The book has been optioned for a television miniseries, along with The Borrowed House.
• #5. The Borrowed House (1975) provides the perspective of a German girl living in a "borrowed" house in Amsterdam with her parents, who were performers sent to entertain the German troops and SS; a Dutch translation was published in 2013, retitled Het Gestolen Huis (The Stolen House - the Dutch are more realistic about saying what happened). This and the previous book are among the 20 top-ranked (by Goodreads) books for children on World War II, out of 188 books. This list differs from the YA book ranking by including all age groups.

Family Correspondence and Photos

As my mother's executor I have been going through all the correspondence and have transcribed much of it that was hand-written, with the help of Leslie Wiesman years ago and then Jay Tepper-Marlin. There are albums of photos and sketches, amply illustrated, and boxes of letters and clippings, in English and Dutch–from prewar, wartime and post-war Holland, Ireland and England. I had some of the Dutch letters translated (with the help of Dutch relatives like Charles Boissevain, Engelien de Booy and Francesca van Hamel) and have posted many letters at http://boissevain.us and http://hildavanstockum.com as well as on several blogs on blogger.com.

It's been an engrossing journey of discovery, with much left for me to learn. For example, I found out that Audrey Hepburn worked for the Dutch Resistance, serving as a courier using her slippers as the container for her messages.

I have been building on my database of information through continuing contact with Dutch relatives - some who were were young children during the war - and other sources of information through letters, posts, emails and phone calls to fill in gaps in information and make the record as complete and useful as it can be.

Boissevain, Emily Heloise MacDonnell, Letters. (Posted on this blogsite.)

de Booy, Hilda Boissevain, Letter to Olga Boissevain van Stockum, October 14, 1940.

Oral Histories

My earliest sources of information on the Dutch Resistance were from stories by my mother, who was well informed as the sister of a bomber pilot, the wife of someone working in the O.S.S. and a Washington, DC resident receiving a steady stream of mail from Europe. I have also picked up stories from my siblings, other relatives, and from people who share a history of family involvement in World War II.

Reference Institutions

NIOD is a research institute in Amsterdam, originally called the Rijks Instituut voor Oorlogs Documentatie (Royal Institute for War Documentation), or RIOD. They renamed it the Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogs Documentatie, NIOD. Since 1999, NIOD has been part of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences). NIOD has now merged with the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS). The acronym therefore stands on its own, as in the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Dutch: NIOD Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies).

NIOD's great early achievement was to publish the fine official 14-volume Dutch history of the war by the late Loe de Jong - Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog ("The Kingdom of the Netherlands During World War II"), which topped out at 18,000 pages. The entire history is supposed to be available digitally.

NIOD also works like a boutique library of the quality of the British Library in London. Go there at  380 Herengracht and enjoy the many services it has available. The only Dutch you must learn is that  Trekken means "pull" and you will need to pull the door open to get into the registration area to get permission to use the the reading room. Then you must know the word Duwen, which means "push" after you go down the hall, to get into the reading room.

NIOD offers 65,000 books and three km. of archives, a reading room with 25 reading areas, with wi-fi throughout, professional staff on hand, fellow researchers  interested in the same thing you are. It has events, such as films and seminars. It is the center of a network of institutions that are digitizing all their documents and sharing them online. The building, designed by A. Salm, was inspired by the Chateau de Chenonceau, which spans the Loire.

The book shelves include thousands of books in English. However, you may not find much in English in the archives.The archival documents are mostly in Dutch and German. If all else fails, you may be interested in the 100,000 photographs that NIOD has available. I found some of great interest to me. (I also found some at the Amsterdam Stadsarchief, the City Archives, which has huge resources in the form of family papers.)

Other Sources and Links

Boissevain (Wikipedia, English) - genealogie.pagina.nl (Dutch Startpagina) - Familieverenigingen (Dutch Wazamar) - Stamboomgids (Dutch genealogy) - genealogie.verzamelgids - Boissevain Family website (Dutch and English)

Boissevain USA (English only, with extensive information on the American Boissevains, especially the three children of Charles Boissevain who emigrated to the USA - Olga, Eugen and Robert).

Boissevain, Town of, Manitoba, Canada - hosts annual Turtle Derby

Boissevain, Charles (journalist, publisher of Het Algemeen Handelsblad, 1842-1927)
Boissevain, Gideon Maria (banker and economist, 1837-1925)
Boissevain, Jan (Amsterdam ship-owner, 1836-1904)
Boissevain, Jean Henri Guillaume (lawyer and publicist, 1817-1870)
Boissevain, Mies van Lennep (Dutch Resistance hero, wife of Robert Lucas Boissevain, 1896-1965)
Boissevain, Walrave (member of Dutch Parliament, 1913-1928)
Boissevain Ford, Natasha (June 14, 1932 - February 13, 2005)

Boissevain, René, Cristal Caves, Australia

Boissevain Daniël, contemporary Dutch actor

Boissevain, Iaira, Consultancy for animal law

Boissevain, Wim, painter, Australia

Boissevain, Prof. Jeremie

Boissevain, Jan (Dutch cavalry, then Montana resort)

de la Porte, André (Hester Boissevain NP VIIIe4 79)

Millay, Edna St. Vincent (married Eugen Boissevain) 

van Hall (Petronella Johanna Boissevain NP VIIa7 54)

van Stockum, Hilda (1908-2006)

van Tienhoven (Robert Lucas Boissevain NP IXh 74)

Forthcoming book: The Boissevain Family and the Dutch Resistance, 1940-45. For links to other chapters, go to the Chapter Outline.