[3] Address, on this subject, The Grafton Press, Genealogical and Biographical Department, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Estimates will be given on data or manuscripts submitted. IV THE "CLAN" GENEALOGY Our chapter heading is simply a re-christening of the oldest and hitherto the favorite plan of the American genealogist. We might rather call it the American genealogy, for nearly all the genealogical works, which have seen the light, are of this kind. The plan of most of the existing works is distinctly that of the exhibition of a genealogical tribe or clan. Its purpose is to assemble in one book all the known descendants of a certain ancestor, or only the male descendants who are bearers of the family surname. The head of the clan is generally the first American emigrant, and his family becomes "Family 1" of the book. "Family 2" will depend upon our choice of one of two modifications of the general plan. Let us suppose that the head of the clan is John Smith, and that he had three children, Mary, John, and Philip, all of whom had families. If our purpose is to exhibit the entire clan, we will make no difference between daughters who marry and give their children the surnames of their husbands, and sons who give their children the surname of the head of the clan. In that case, the family of John Smith being Family 1, that of his oldest child, Mary, will be Family 2, while the families of John and Philip will be 3 and 4 respectively. In the third generation we will go back to Mary's oldest child, who left descendants, who will become the head of Family 5, followed by her other children, who had families, in the order of birth. The children of John will next be given in order of birth, followed by those of Philip, all who had children being treated as heads of families to which a family number is assigned. But the work of accounting for all the descendants becomes so irksome, in the case of fertile families, which have to be carried through a number of generations, that it is the prevailing custom to shirk the responsibility of this full exhibit. Thus, only the families of sons, and son's sons, are carried down from generation to generation. The daughters, if their descendants bear other surnames, are set aside, although the blood-tie is the same. The tribe itself is not exhibited, but only that part which bears the surname of the common ancestor. This is the modification adopted by the most eminent genealogists. All forms of the "clan" genealogy unite collateral lines of descent by the sentimental bond of a thin blood-tie, affording an excellent basis for "family reunions." But they are quite unsatisfactory as attempts to exhibit one's ancestry. If we are included in such a book, "The Smith Family," for example, we generally find but one of our many ancestral lines traced. And even if one or two of our Smith progenitors married cousins of the same name, only two or three of the Smith lines will lead down to ourselves.