How do I interpret this information?
We received a stack of pages similar to this from a relative of my husband's. I am very new to this and could use some help interpreting this, specifically in knowing how to enter the information on family search. What is considered the first name? What is the surname? I assume "f." indicated the birth date and "d." death date? Any insights are very much appreciated. Thank you!
Answers
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In this image you have parents and their 10 children. f. means born and d. death.
When name ends -sen or -datter it is a patronymic, someones son or daughter, like Estensen means son of Esten and Estensdatter means daughter of Esten. Feragen is a family name.
When person does not have a family name, add his/her patronymic into surname box. Then when person is known with both, patronymic and family name, I like to add first name and patronymic into the First names box, because patronymic is like a second name AND even today some people uses patronymics as their second/third name. (Well, some people add both patronymic and family name into surname box.)
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Thank you so much!
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Yes, f. is født (born), d. is død (died). This is a typical pedigree chart showing 10 children. FamilySearch is pretty user friendly and intuitive for the most part. There are some great helps under the "Help" menue in the upper right side of the page. You can also look at the "Search" drop-down menue and click on "Research Wiki". There are lots of helps here as well. For Scandinavian research helps, there are numerous Webinars under "Nordic 2026". Family Search Wiki also has one page simple instructions on how to do just about everything in the FamilySearch Tree. If you like to dig deeper, there is an online free family history guidebook.
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Do keep in mind that Family Tree is a massive database of the collective work of huge numbers of people over the past hundred and fifty years. That means it is always important, no matter how unlikely you think it may be, to carefully check for existing people in Family Tree before starting to add people. it can take some work due to the various spellings used for peoples names. Sometimes you have to get a bit creative in your searches. You will be surprised at what you may find.
For example, the couple at the top of the chart you posted here and their ten children are already in Family Tree. Here is Esten entered as:
Esten ( Riise) Feragen 1854–1945 ID: 9WTG-GYP
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/9WTG-GYP
These were added sometime in 2009 or earlier to the FamilySearch databases that became Family Tree. There is extensive family connected to them.
But a lot of the information is pretty incomplete and you should be able to improve these entries quite a bit. For example, the chart you have has a few spouses and a lot of death dates that are missing from Family Tree that you should add.
I do see that another user of Family Tree was doing some work on this family in July 2019. This might be a relative you would want to contact through the messaging system in Family Tree.
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I looked closer and while there are ten children in Family Tree, one of them, Rasmus, is a duplicate that needs to be merged so there are only nine children. The youngest on your chart, Gerhart, was still alive and living in a nursing home according to the note on the chart the last time anyone did anything with that chart. Since he was born in 1907, it is highly unlikely that he is alive now so he can be added to Family Tree.
Here, in fact, is his gravestone on which two of his siblings are also shown:
https://www.disnorge.no/gravminner/bilde.php?id=3269239
Here is the opening page for that database of gravestones:
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