The system employed in compiling the genealogical section of this work is believed to be the most approved now ion use, and may readily be understood by a little study. The compilers have added new features which they believe will be found valuable, both in the body of the work and in the index. The ancestral chain, given after the name of each descendant having issue, shows the full line of descent at a glance. Each descendant has his own number. When descendants do not have issue, their full biography will be found connected with their names first mentioned, and in the consecutive small numbers.<br><br>When a descendant has issue, his or her name is carried forward in the large numbers to the next generation, where the biography is fully given, followed by the list of his or her children.<br><br>Each female line ends in the book with the grandchildren of an Ogden mother, but the line is continued in the charts, and without numbers.<br><br>Where correspondents sent in tardy data concerning their families, and after the editors had systematically arranged the regular descendants by consecutive numbers, it became necessary to group the added names in the immediate family line, each child taking the parents number, with a letter of the alphabet annexed.<br><br>In cases of intermarriage, and where there was issue, the person bearing the name Ogden, or the person first recorded in the regular line of ancestry, is usually the one carried forward to the next generation. To indicate specially the person carried forward, the cross-reference (See No.) is employed.<br><br>The usual genealogical terms and abbreviations are used throughout the work, viz.: b. - born; cir., circ. - circa, about; d. - died; dau. - daughter; d.s. p. - died without issue; d. y. - died young; m. - married; s. p. –sine prole, without issue; unm. - unmarried; w. - wife; wid. - widow or widower.<br><br>The editors do not assume that no errors are discoverable in this work. A number of conflicting statements sent by different correspondents, and a disagreement of old records, were often puzzling to the editors; but great care was exercised in settling upon what seemed to them the most authentic and trustworthy.