Attention all van den/der Berg researchers ...

June, use the SA FB page to advertise this alert too. Different people seem to come upon discussion topics more easily through one or the other. If we use both we double our chances of it being seen :-)

Thanks June, I would appreciate a link to this v/d Berg ancester line of mine, could not yet research this link.

Christina Johanna Pieterse (Breet)(van den Berg)

I have sent a message to Johann and will report back. In the mean time he has sent me a load more names of van den Berg PROGs!

I have been adding more people to the body of the project - http://www.geni.com/projects/van-den-r-Berg-South-African-Progenitors and loading the documents I have received from Johan Pottas.

following the suggestion of Muller Ignatius du Plessis, j1 I propose that the PROGS get numbered a1; a2; a3 etc. sorted primarily in descending order in accordance with the number of offspring and/or known descendants, and secondly in alphabetical order.

Numbering the progenitors in the way proposed makes a lot of sense. Now the challenge will be to get everybody to agree and apply the same numbering. Big problem will be those who are new to Geni and who do not know anything about the idea.

I suppose we apply these principles spontaneously to all other surnames?

I agree with Chris and Daan. SV/PROG 1 or 2 followed by the b,c,d,e,f, etc, just looks better and easier than a1,b1.
But I don't feel like talking to nobody and discussing nothing today.
I will just agree on everything everybody says.

Does the numbering system that Chris proposes have a name?

The numbering system is the de Villiers system as outlined on the Referrence Project http://www.geni.com/projects/South-African-Genealogical-Reference-C... and used in the SAG volumes. I find that repeating the full SV/PrOG 1 etc to the numbers is rather cumbersome. How about if we were to have SV/PROPG 1, 2 etc. and then follow the generation using a1 or a2 etc?

Hi everybody, the genealogical numbering system can be used for individuals with similar or dissimilar last names as long as they are relatives. As a result, If all the van den/der Berg progenitors incorporated in a unified form of genealogical numbering were in fact family of one another then I have no objections. After all, the numbering progression suggests relatedness (genus). If however some progenitors are unrelated they need not be incorporated and another form of clarification, one that is obvious to the novice researcher/enthusiast, may be used.