Here's how the indexed family tree works:
There are two sets of indexes, one with the base person Michael Jonas, the other with base person Sheila Jonas (females are listed under their maiden name).
It may be easiest to start by bookmarking one of them in your browser: http://jonases.org/FamilyTree/MOJ/Indexes.html for Meriel or Michael or http://jonases.org/FamilyTree/Sheila/Indexes.html for Gill or Sheila.
The way the indexing is arranged ...
You start in a page of indexes.
There are indexes to first names (male and female separately), surnames/suffixes, birth/baptism places, death/burial places.
When you click on a letter A-Z, it shows the index for that initial letter.
When you click on a name in that index, it shows a list of all ancestors linked to that name. Each list is sorted by generation number, so the latest generations come first.
When you click on an ancestor in that list, it shows you all the details about that ancestor. The ancestors are grouped by generation.
In the details list, there's a double-arrow symbol (↔) against each ancestor - click on it to see the full line or lines of descendants down from that ancestor. There are only multiple lines if there are marriages or liaisons between nth-cousins.
There are also indexes to country of birth/baptism or death/butial, and an index to the generations.
Example:
Say you want to see if any ancestors were born in Luxulyan, Cornwall.
Click on [L] in the birth/baptism places index, for a list of place names beginning with "L".
...Luxembourg , Luxulion , Luxulyan , ...
(well, there's a spelling variation already: Luxulion, Luxulyan)
Find Luxulyan in the list of names and click on it. [If it's a long list, try a text search: press Ctrl-F then key in Luxulyan]
Birth or Baptism Place Index for Luxulion, Luxulyan
(This shows that I picked up the different spellings and they are indexed together)
All ancestors recorded as being born in Luxulyan are (should be!) then shown.
7-16
Catherine
Udy 1756-1824 Born
13 Apr 1756 Luxulyan, Cornwall, England. Baptised
13 Apr 1756 Luxulion, Cornwall, England.
8-29
Hart Udy ....…
(there's a dubious
date already: Catherine wouldn't have been baptised on the day she
was born)
Click on a highlighted link (eg. 7-16 for Catherine Udy) for their full details.
↔ 7-16
Catherine
Udy 1756-1824
daughter of 8-29
Hart
Udy 1715-1762 and
8-30
Catherine
Littleton 1732-1781 .
Born
13 Apr 1756 Luxulyan, Cornwall, England. Baptised
13 Apr 1756 Luxulion, Cornwall, England. Died
18 April 1824 Perranzabuloe, Cornwall, England. Buried
Wadebridge, Cornwall Unitary Authority, Cornwall, England.
Children
of: Catherine Udy and 7-15
Charles Nickell 1752-1793 :
6-10
Sarah Moyle Nickell 1788-1883
Up
to 3 generations:
(up to 3 generations of Catherine's ancestors)
Click on the ↔ symbol (just to the left of "7-16 Catherine Udy") for their full set of descendants down to the base person. This one is also useful for seeing which side of the tree (or both) an ancestor is on - look down the list for generation 2 (parents - see 'Generations' below).
┌7-16
Catherine Udy 1756-1824 (and: 7-15
Charles Nickell 1752-1793)
├6-10
Sarah Moyle Nickell 1788-1883 (and: 6-9
William Powning 1782-1841)
├5-5
William Charles Powning 1820-1866 (and:
5-6
Sarah Onslow Heaven 1814-1887)
├4-3
William Charles Powning 1843-1904 (and:
4-4
Sophia Howard Roadley 1841-1902)
├3-2
Olive Howard Powning 1881-1949 (and: 3-1
Arthur Charlton Jonas 1866-1938)
├2-1
Ronald McClellan Powning Jonas, Cdr, DSC
RN 1903-1981 (and: 2-2
Doreen Scott Christall Oldfield
1917-2001)
╧1-1
Michael Jonas b.1944
There's a 'Home' link top and bottom of each page to get back to the main indexes page, so that you can start the next search, or you can use Ctrl-click on links so that they open in new tabs. The 'Back' button should work too.
Generations:
Generation 1 is the base person - the one with all the ancestors.
Generation 2 is their parents, 3 is grandparents, 4 is great-grandparents, etc. Take off 3 from the generation number to get the number of "Great"s before "GrandParent" - so for example, generation 6 is 3*Great-GrandParents.
If an ancestor is an ancestor by multiple lines - ie, if there have been marriages (or liaisons) between nth-cousins - then he or she is given the lowest possible generation number:
A parent's generation number is normally one higher than their children's, but not necessarily.
If the descendants of sibling A, say, produced children faster than the descendants of sibling B, then sibling A will have a higher generation number than sibling B. Their parent(s) will then have generation number 1 higher than sibling B.
It is possible for a parent to have a lower generation number than some of their children.
Spouses do not necessarily have the same generation number. Where an ancestor has children with more than one spouse, those spouses may have different generation numbers.
I use generation numbers as the main identifier, because an ancestor doesn't necessarily have known birth/death dates. Generation numbers should pretty quickly give a general idea of how far back you are looking, and you can then start looking for dates to try to get a better picture.
About the data:
The indexes are only as good as the data in the ancestors' records, and some of that data isn't very good!
There are plenty of spelling errors, data errors, etc, and spelling can be very variable in older records, so you may have to look for alternative spellings.
I have tried to combine different spellings - like Warminster and Werminster for example - into a single index page, but there are lots I have missed, and some may have been combined that shouldn't have been. I have also tried to combine interchangeable names - like Maud and Matilda for example - but again I haven't been entirely consistent.
Titles tend to be in the surname/suffix index - King or Queen or Duke for example - but Saint and Sir and Lady tend to be in the first names index. If in doubt, look in both.
Sometimes old names are used for places etc (eg. Austrasia), and sometimes the modern name is used (eg. Germany, France, etc). It depends mostly on what the original source records used.
I have tried to remove accents from all names and text, because they make some things diabolically difficult.
You will need a bit of trial and error to find your way through the jungle.
Snippets
There's a separate 'Snippets' file for each base person. This is a collection of all the comments on all that person's ancestors.
In the Snippets file, you can see comments documenting issues about the accuracy of the data. So, for example, there are comments where different sources have shown different information.
There are also comments giving a bit more detail. So, for example, you could do a 'Find' for "Illegitimate" or "Murdered" (there are several of both of those).
The ancestry.com system limited each comment to just 255 characters, so some comments are a bit brief, or are split across two or more comments. (The tree was built in ancestry.com).