The grid shouldn't be posted with the FAQs, but maybe this explanation should.

(If you want a copy contact Virginia directly. --Mike)

The grid includes everyone who came through the RoF, including those deceased by the end of the 1633 book. It includes wedding guests, passers-by, construction workers, etc., as well as the inhabitants of GV and the rest of the RoF territory. The statistics (age distribution, etc.) are based on the 2000 census for Mannington, WV, extrapolated to the total 3,500 population of the RoF.

Based on the 2000 census statistics of Mannington, WV, it is not possible to have 80% of the population of GV be out-of-town loners, with military experience, between the ages of 20 and 30.

It is also not possible to have 80% of the population of GV be male.

Beyond the basic statistics, I fed the grid program the most popular US first and last names, male and female, by decade -- with allowances for the Appalachian custom of using a mother's or grandmother's surname as a given name. I fed in actual local surnames (1900 census and Mannington District cemeteries -- thank you, WPA and Col. Morgan Morgan Chapter of the DAR for copying all those cemetery entries). I made a few changes on the surnames -- added a few that do not appear and deliberately blocked out a few that do, because they are simply too prominent, such as Fluharty.

However, we've named the GV Middle School Fluharty and the new hospital the Leahy Medical Center, to keep the local flavor.

Everyone in the grid has a name (maiden name for women), birthdate by year, deathdate by year where appropriate, spouse where appropriate (including ex-spice and non-matrimonial relationships), child-to-parent connections, and the following field variables:

Church Affiliation
Pre-RoF Employment
Occupation
Highest Education Level
Veteran?

I ran those on the grid program, and by the time I did the last variable (Veteran? - with the appropriate war), the grid program creaked to a halt.

Henceforth, I'll make all changes manually. For instance, if you really want your character's wife to be named Irene rather than Florence, that's no problem. The change will appear in the next version of the grid. Currently, it's version 6e.

Any changes since it (name changes, claims on characters, etc.) will show when I start sending out version 6f. That will not happen until Eric starts snippeting his anthology story, because some of the changes constitute snerks.

NOTE ABOUT CHANGES: The overall statistics are fixed -- except for Eric and Mr. Weber (as in the case of the previously non-existent civil engineering firm), Grantville doesn't get endowed with what Mannington doesn't have. Within that limit, the characteristics of the "unclaimed" persons in the grid can be changed around as long as flexibility lasts -- if your chosen low-life has been assigned a high school diploma and you want to have him as a drop-out, I'll just trade that field with someone else who is currently a drop-out.

But there aren't any more graduate degrees in engineering popping out of the woodwork -- we don't add them. If you want one for your chracter, either comb through the grid and find an "unclaimed" character who has one and adopt him, or else find an "unclaimed" character who has one and request that it be reassigned to yours, please.

If such a "reassignment" requires major restructuring, it may take me a while to do.

The following optional fields exist when the author wants them:

Claimed Character (who is using this person?)
Hobby
Social and Civic Organizations
Politics

Some authors have added these for their characters; others have not. There is a list of clubs and organizations known to exists in Mannington, WV, at the end of the .rtf version of the grid. I can add additional optional fields.

There's also a place for explanatory notes and mini-biographies (which in the .rtf show as footnotes).

The fields show in parentheses after the individual's name on the .rtf version, which is arranged by (minus snerks) place of employment as of the end of the 1633 book.

The other export that I did was into genealogical software. Once I had it in that, I added all the information that the Grantville Genealogy Club and the EV Bureau of Vital Statistics have been zealously collecting since the RoF, indicating how the various families are related to one another. This includes not only the basic parent-to-child and spouse-to-spouse connections, but grandparents and great-grandparents, siblings, in-laws, cousins, second cousins, and the like. For instance, that's what told Gorg Huff for the Sewing Circle story that David Bartley was a second cousin of Jeff Higgins :))

This version of the grid has the fields sortable (if your chosen genealogical software works like a mini-flat file data base). Anyone who uses genealogical software may request the .rtf as a GEDCOM and import it.

Because I used local surnames and have considerable generational depth in the grid, I do NOT want it placed on the internet where random surfers can access it. If a West Virginia historian or genealogist came across it, it would drive him or her quite insane trying to figure out just who these people were. The introduction to the .rtf version notes that it is fiction, but there's no way to put that disclaimer on the GEDCOM version.

Virginia