Information about the types of records in the data

Data of how many children were both born and died in 1764

This graph highlights the people who were explicitly marked as illiterate.

Less than 5% of the individuals – excluding infants on the occasion of their baptism, and the deceased on the occasion of their burial -- were explicitly indicated as unable to sign their name, an ability that has been used as a proxy for illiteracy. Many individuals did not sign their names for other reasons, or did sign them in one record but not in another. Various parish officials had divergent practices about signing, and the baptism records of infants were not signed by the infant's mother. Thus, this metric is a highly imperfect reflection of literacy. But it is clear that while illiterate people were not the most connected, they certainly did not lack for connections. The most connected illiterate person, Magdelaine Rouffignac, who appears at the bottom of the graph, was married to a literate husband and the couple had several friends who signed their marriage record.  Information about inability to sign can be found in the downloadable datasets.

Among those who married in the course of 1764, literacy rates appear considerably lower. Only 40 percent of women signed the parish records of their marriages, and only 54 percent of men. Of those who did not sign, 12 percent were noted as being unable to do so. There were 12 marriages in which the husband signed and the wife did not, and 2 marriages in which the wife signed and the husband did not. It is interesting that most of the individuals who did not sign the records of their marriages were married in the large parish of St Martial, in which only 22 percent of spouses signed, compared to 67 percent in other parishes.  No husbands or wives were listed in St Martial as being unable to sign (although the parish register of St Martial did note inability to sign in records of other ceremonies, including baptisms and burials.)

"Degree" refers to the number of edges that originate or terminate in a node. This graph displays the breakdown of nodes by degree.

This graph demonstrates the sizes of the clusters of connected nodes. There are many unconnected nodes and small clusters. These represent people who died without any signatories and small family units. There are also several clusters that are much larger, including one with nearly 750 nodes.