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Guidelines for Submitting Information

Download “Guidelines for Submitting Information” as a PDF

Two templates are provided:

Completing the templates with your family details will provide the CFA with the information needed to document your family in CFALD. If you use a family tree program, you may prefer to generate a report or GEDCOM directly from your program and submit that.

It would reduce considerably the work of entering your family information into CFALD if you would follow as closely as you can the Data Entry Standards adopted by the CFA for this international database.

You should save both templates to your own computer in “My Documents” or a similar location where you can find them again. As soon as you begin populating either of the templates with information, “Save As” the document under a file name that best describes it for your purposes. (Using “Save As” allows you to specify the name of the document.) Example of file names: Thomas Ernest Chandler family.doc and My Name lineage.doc where “My Name” is replaced by your name. Once you have the document saved with the file name you chose, continue adding your family details and “Save” again often to safeguard the work you have done so far.

Barring unusual circumstances (such as having Chandlers in two different ancestral lines), you will only complete one “My Chandler Lineage” template, which will document your Chandler ancestry. However, you may complete as many Family Groups as you have information for. Perhaps you will complete a Family Group for the family of your grandfather, which will list your Chandler parent and his or her siblings – and then you will also complete a Family Group for the family of your parents, documenting you and your siblings. Remember, each Family Group must be given an individual file name!

Examples of file names from Claudia’s family:
Thomas Jefferson Chandler family.doc (my grandfather’s children)
Thomas Ernest Chandler family.doc (my father’s children – my sister and me)

If your line has Family Groups headed by people with the same name, distinguish between them by adding the year of birth after the surname, i.e. Bailey Chandler b 1751.doc and Bailey Chandler born 1854.doc.

When completing the templates, please follow these CFALD guidelines:

  • use maiden surname for females (example: Claudia Chandler)
  • before the surname, put nick­names in quotes (example: Thomas Jefferson “Tom” Chandler)
  • use day-month-year date format (example: 4 Apr 2012)
  • show places as town, county, state (example: Amory, Monroe Co, MS)
  • where information has been acquired from another person, indicate that in the “Sources” area (examples: “Oral information from my uncle, Frank Chandler” or ‘Letter dated 3 March 1946 from my grandmother, Cora Blanche Malpass Chandler“)

If you have sources which occur many times, to avoid repeating them in full you can send a separate numbered list of sources, and then simply put the number in the appropriate areas in the template.  You can do the same with repetitive place names if that is helpful.

My Chandler Lineage Template

The My Chandler Lineage template should be used to document your Chandler lineage as far back as your research has taken you. Please do not include speculative information or information from other researchers unless clearly labeled as such. It would be best to stop at the Chandler ancestor you know for sure, from your own research.

If the information you add causes a table for any generation to grow beyond one page, that is not a problem. If you need more generations added to the Lineage template and your computer skills are not up to it, write for help. If you cannot complete all generations, that is not a problem – just put in the information you have.

Family Group Template

Use the Family Group template for documenting families within each generation. You can complete a Family Group for your own family (your children), for the family that includes you and your siblings, for the family of your Chandler parent and his or her siblings, and any other family group for which you have information.

When the information is entered into CFALD, what you enter at the top of each Family Group (“Father of this family,” “Mother of this family,” and “Information submitted by”) will be used to make the connection between this family group and other individuals already in CFALD or in your Lineage document. If there are questions or problems with making these connections, we will come back to you for clarification.

Space is provided for information on six children. If you need to add more children, you could complete the document twice, saving each under a slightly different file name (Examples: “Elisha Asbury Chandler 1.doc” and Elisha Asbury Chandler 2.doc”). Entering the names of the same mother and father, plus putting your name as the submitter of information, would make it clear that both documents are for the same family. Alternatively, you could copy and paste enough extra “Child” sections into the document to complete the family.


If you need help with the templates, write to Web-Editor at


When you have completed the Lineage template and as many Family Group templates as you have information for, send an email to and attach your completed documents. (Remember, each document should have an individual file name.)

If you prefer to complete the templates by hand and send the documents by postal mail, you may send them to

Glen Smith
869 East Antilles Court
Meridian, ID 83642-6671

We invite your suggestions on how to improve these instructions and the templates.

Thank you for submitting information to CFALD. By providing the most complete information possible for each generation, you are helping us create a legacy for future Chandlers.

If you have questions, email

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