Family Historian User Group

Have a girl born c1835 who in the 1841 and 1851 Census is living with her Grandparents. Her family name is the same as the Grandparents, Parsons, and so far I've not been able to find the name of her parents. I don't know if she is a daughter of one of the sons or born out of wedlock to a daughter. As I don't know the sex of the parent I named him/her as 'Unknown Parsons'.

My problem with FH is that I can't use <clear sex> in the 'Sex:' box for Unknown Parsons. When I do I get a warning message 'If a person is a spouse or parent in a family record you can change their sex, but they cannot have no sex at all.' I would prefer to show no sex at all.
Also when I chose 'Male' as the sex for Unknown Parsons, in reports it states 'was the Daughter of' .

The Sex field restriction is probably a GEDCOM requirement and the addition of a Note would clarify that you had to plump for one or the other.

Exactly where in which type of Report does it state the wrong child sex?
As soon as I change the Sex of any Individual any displayed Report instantly changes suit.
Are you sure you are not looking at Unknown Parsons daughter?

tatewise wrote:
Exactly where in which type of Report does it state the wrong child sex?
As soon as I change the Sex of any Individual any displayed Report instantly changes suit.
Are you sure you are not looking at Unknown Parsons daughter?

Ancestors by Generation.

Root is the Daughter followed by 2nd Generation, Unknown Parsons (male) daughter of followed by Grandparents names.

I cannot get that effect.
Exactly how do you display the Ancestors by Generation Report and exactly how do you change the Sex of Unknown Parsons?

Steve, it may be worth exporting the 3 or 4 people involved and attaching the gedcom to the posting, assuming there are no privacy issues, so we can see the problem.

Don't ask me how or why but problem has cleared. Changed my printer from cable to wireless, reloaded 5.0.9 due to problems printing diagrams. Printed diagram and when I checked Ancestors by Generation, before printing, line had changed to 'was the son of' . How weird is that.

tatewise wrote:The Sex field restriction is probably a GEDCOM requirement

Agreed - the GEDCOM 5.5 spec'n has 3 roles for individuals - Child, Husband, Wife. No space for a non-specific Parent. in addition, the family allows "Age At Event" for each of the parents - but again, one is marked Wife, the other Husband. Note the 5.5 spec'n also says "The family record structure assumes that the HUSB/father is male and WIFE/mother is female."

While one could say "Oh, don't validate which one goes where," I have no idea how deeply entangled the uses of those two roles are and all sorts of back-tracking might be necessary if the coders said - "Husband could actually be either." Plus they would put any software accepting the GEDCOM file at risk.

In cases like the original poster relates, if there are no other clues, I usually end up assuming the child belongs to a daughter of the family. On balance it seems the more likely outcome (e.g. child born out of wedlock to a daughter, living with granny). Plus I add a note to (at least) the mythical parent saying this could be a son or daughter... (Please don't bother to list all your instances where it's a son who's involved - got them myself - it's just an arbitrary decision).

"Husband could actually be either."

This is exactly what FH now allows to support same sex civil partnerships, despite it being non-standard GEDCOM. Both partners can be Male, or both can be Female, but what neither can be is Unknown. In Reports they are both referred to as Partner rather than Husband and Wife.

tatewise wrote:

"Husband could actually be either."

This is exactly what FH now allows to support same sex civil partnerships, despite it being non-standard GEDCOM.

Interesting - I did think of that after I'd posted. Wonder what the GEDCOM looks like? I believe we can rely on Simon to encode it within standard GEDCOM. Presumably he's extended that standard in some fashion, and that extension still places requirements on the data, as you say.

If you are interested, look at File > Import/Export > Export > GEDCOM File and check the Help, especially the Exporting Same Sex Relationship Information.
Simon offers 4 choices to handle same sex relationships, two of which do NOT conform precisely to the GEDCOM spec, but are more likely used by other genealogy programs than the strict GEDCOM option.

tatewise wrote:If you are interested ... Simon offers 4 choices to handle same sex relationships

I was interested, I did look and ... I think to understand it properly would require a cup of coffee and some experimentation. Coffee is OK but time to experiment is lacking.

Still - it did remind me of that dialogue, which I never use because I'm of an age to have started with the Split Tree Helper to pull off an extra GEDCOM for "export". Maybe I should look at that dialogue next time I want an "export", so thanks for that.