Berks County Genealogical Society

FAMILY GROUP SHEET PROJECT

INSTRUCTIONS - PLEASE READ FIRST

To participate in creating a permanent file of genealogical data on Berks Countians and their families, please complete and return the enclosed Family Group Sheets. If you prefer, provide their equivalent, printed from your computer programs. However, please take some time to read these instructions before you prepare the forms so that they will be as legible and uniform as possible.

It preparing by hand: PLEASE TYPE OR USE A BLACK INK. MEDIUM POINT PEN. We cannot produce a readable photo or microfilm copy of these sheets if you do not use either a typewriter or a medium-point, black ink pen.

If preparing on your printer: PLEASE INSURE THAT YOUR RIBBON OR TONER IS BOLD ENOUGH, and that the font is large enough to reproduce on microfilm. Font size 10 is the absolute minimum useful size, unless printed in bold face on a high quality printer

You decide how many family group sheets to submit. You can choose to complete sheets for all your direct ancestors' families or just for some families.

Submit a form for a family even if you cannot furnish all the data on the members. Knowing all we want about an ancestor is sometimes impossible. Use a "Children Continuation Sheet" if you can identify more children. Please list children in chronological order if you can.

DATES: Record dates in the form DAY, MONTH, YEAR. E.g.: "18 Jan l853". Use the abbreviation "C" = "about" before dates if you have only an approximate date for an event. Ex: c1850.

NAMES: Letter the surnames [last] names of the husband and wife first in CAPITAL LETTERS. E.g.; HUSBAND SCHMITT. Johan Georg. Record the wife under her birth name if known. E.g.: WIFE HOLTZINGER. Wilhemina. Both the husband's name and the wife's birth name will be indexed from the sheets.

SOURCES; To make the genealogical information recorded on these sheets as useful as possible, please record the SOURCE of your data whenever you can. If you cannot cite a primary source for data listed, write "Theory" in the space provided after "SOURCE". See the sample completed family group sheet for examples.

All submissions become the property of BCGS which reserves the right to edit, combine, copy, publish and distribute.