Skillbuilding: Writing a KDP as a Narrative Lineage
Angela Packer McGhie, CG, FUGA
"Writing a KDP as a Narrative Lineage," OnBoard 29 (September 2023): 17–19 (Edited to match the 2025 BCG Application Guide.)
Writing a Kinship-Determination Project (KDP) can be a fulfilling project as it unites two genealogical objectives: documenting relationship conclusions and writing family history. Genealogists thoroughly research individuals to accurately reconstruct their family histories. The research reveals details about the individual within the family and community. The records provide historical context that helps to create a rich family history.
The Kinship-Determination Project weaves life stories with proof summaries that document the relationships between generations.[1] The KDP is formatted as narrative lineage highlighting one individual or couple in each of three generations. The contents for each generation usually includes the following four sections:
1) A genealogical summary in the opening paragraph which details the subject’s full name, nicknames, birth, marriage, and death dates and places; spouse’s name and vital statistics, with full documentation.
2) A biographical sketch that tells the life story, including significant events placed in historical context.
3) A child list detailing the subject’s children in birth order and documenting their birth, marriage, and death dates and places, along with the name(s) of the spouse(s).
Another required element is the proof summary or proof argument detailing the documented evidence that links an individual and his or her parent(s). The proof may be housed in an independent section, incorporated into the biographical sketch, or into the child list.
Formatting a Kinship-determination Project
Genealogical compilations are numbered to facilitate the reader’s ability to move back and forth between generations and follow an individual or line of descent. Standard 72 in Genealogy Standards provides best practice guidance about genealogical formats and numbering systems.[2] Numbering Your Genealogy: Basic Systems, Complex Families, and International Kin details descriptions of the genealogical formats and provides examples.[3]
There are two traditional style formats: the Register System and the NGSQ System. The Register System gives an individual number to those carried forward in the next generation. The NGSQ System assigns individual numbers to every individual in the project, including people named in the children’s lists. The NGSQ system details full vital information (birth, marriage, death, and spouses) for each child in the children’s list.
Numbering Your Genealogy provides information about numbering and formatting genealogies and pedigrees, but does not cover lineages. Narrative lineages are shorter and less complicated than the other formats, and Standard 72 states that they “need not be numbered.”[4] While numbering individuals within a narrative lineage is not required in a KDP, it is traditional and can be helpful to the reader.
For numbering narrative lineages, the best resource is The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual.[5] This manual, published in 2000, was replaced with Genealogy Standards, but the new version does not include the narrative lineage guidance, which stated:
“Each person in the overall family has a distinct position within it. Two sets of numbers are used to designate that position clearly:
- Identifying numbers. Arabic numbers denote each person in the direct line. The numbers begin with “1” for the first person discussed and continue thereafter in sequence.
Identifying numbers are uniquely personal—with the exception of “1,” each number appears twice within the compilation and in both cases it is associated with a specific direct-line individual.
(a) It is written near the left margin preceding the person’s name in a parental child-list.
(b) It precedes the same person's name at the beginning of his or her genealogical summary.
- Birth-order numbers. Lower-case Roman numerals are assigned to each of the offspring mentioned in a child-list. The numerals begin with “I” for the person’s first-born child and continue in sequence to his or her last-born. Birth-order numbers are not unique to any given person; all first-born children, or example, are “i.” Because stepchildren and adoptees were not “born of” the direct-line person, they are not assigned birth-order numbers.”[6]
Footnote numbers, citing the source of every statement of fact, are required for any of the formats selected for the Kinship-Determination Project.
Typography
The typography used in genealogies, lineages, and pedigrees is also based on either the Register System, or the NGSQ System.
The Register System uses the following typographical formatting:
- The subject’s and spouse’s names in the genealogical summary are bold-faced written with large and small capital letters.
- Names in the child list are in large and small capital letters.
- The words birth, marriage, and death can be abbreviated as b., m., and d. in the child’s list.
- Citation reference numbers are superscript numbers enclosed in square brackets.
The NGSQ System uses the following typographical formatting:
- The subject’s and spouse’s names in the genealogical summary are bold-faced.
- Names in the child list are in small caps.
- The words birth, marriage, and death are spelled out in the child’s list.
- Citation reference numbers are superscripted.
Example of a Narrative Lineage
This is an example of a narrative lineage with topography in the NGSQ style.
[1] Board for Certification of Genealogists, The BCG Application Guide (Washington, DC: Board for Certification of Genealogists, 2021), 7.
[2] Board for Certification of Genealogists, Genealogy Standards, 2nd ed., rev. (Nashville, Tennessee: Ancestry, 2021), 39–40.
[3] Joan Ferris Curran, Madilyn Coen Crane, and John H. Wray, Numbering Your Genealogy: Basic Systems, Complex Families, and International Kin, NGS special publication no. 97, edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills (Arlington, Va.: National Genealogical Society, 2008).
[4] Board for Certification of Genealogists, Genealogy Standards, 2nd ed., rev. (Nashville, Tennessee: Ancestry, 2021), 39.
[5] BCG, The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual, Millennium edition (Washington, DC: Board for Certification of Genealogists, 2000).
[6] Board for Certification of Genealogists, The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual, Millennium edition (Washington, DC: Board for Certification of Genealogists, 2000), page 67.