Quote:
Originally Posted by Lalwendė
To compile a tree, a Hobbit would need lots of accurate records to look up. There must have been some kind of administration in The Shire given that there is a Mayor and it is divided up into regions, but did they register events such as births/marriages/deaths in any way? Did they take part in official ceremonies for these and thus leave some kind of 'parish record'? Or did someone simply record events in a communal book that had been held and annotated by previous generations? Hmmmm...
I do think that a primary concern for Hobbits was inheritance, given that 'headships' of families seemed to be inheritable (even if they didn't necessarily come with any land - see the next head of the Baggins family after Bilbo and Frodo left) and also that in some families they seem to have been restricted to males only. The Baggins 'headship' bypassed several females with a strong claim and went to males only, even if they were distant on the tree, whereas the Sackville line could obviously pass through a female branch of the tree (Otho inherited his Sackville name from his mother).
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Well, we know that Bilbo's will needed seven signatures in red ink to be legal, that there makes me think that there was some sort of strict filing system in place.