Family Historian User Group

In Many Cases in order not to enter everyones partner I need to add a note about them but it always seems to want to tie it to an event like a marriage and a partner.
For example I have a John Albert We*** who I have entered and I want to add his birth death and marriage. I do not want to add his wife but I do want to enter details about her and his children as a NOTE.
There seems no way to add a "General" note to his file about his wife and children without adding her or them. It appears that it has to be a tied note about a shared situation (not a general note) and needs to be added to an event.
All I want is to add a General note to his file about her the children and where he (&they) lived etc.
In other progs Roots Magic FTM etc one can add General notes to any one person.
Any help please

Notes are the most prevalent feature of FH. They can be attached to almost everything.

In the Main tab of the Property Box there is a Note box just below the Name of John Albert We***.
Use that for 'general' notes about his wife and children, etc.

Alternatively, open the Notes tab of the Property Box, use the Add Note button and choose Note about John Albert We***
That will add the same Note text as is shown on the Main tab.

In other words, FH is just the same as Roots Magic, FTM, etc.

Thank you
I Have done this I must have ticked details of the couple (ie wife not entered) that confuses things rather than notes re just the husband
Thanks again

I’m interested to know why you don’t want to add the wife and his children in the ‘conventional’ way?

For me, the reason is that I don't want an ever-expanding tree for remote relatives, especially by marriage.
If the wife and children get added, then what do you do about their spouses and children?

tatewise wrote: ↑

21 Feb 2022 11:14

For me, the reason is that I don't want an ever-expanding tree for remote relatives, especially by marriage.
If the wife and children get added, then what do you do about their spouses and children?

Ah, OK. I'd never thought of using a tree program in that way!

Pardon? In what way?

I suspect this discussion reveals -- more than anything -- that we all have different reasons/objectives for our research, and there isn't any 'right' point at which we draw a line.

I add anyone to my tree that I find connected (by family or otherwise) in support of the FAN principle. FH can cope with really big trees so storage isn't an issue.

However, I don't use diagrams a lot (if I do, it tends to be Ancestors and Descendants), so the impact of my choice on the size of diagrams that I use is minimal.

If you use diagrams a lot, I can see that you might want to draw a line somewhere -- recording information in such a way that it doesn't expand a diagram.

I too started out with the scattergun approach, adding spouses and in-laws, then In-laws of In-laws etc etc
.
I then came to the conclusion I was researching people that had absolutely no relationship to me, and with 20,000+ people in the tree, I begain restricting it to only those that were genetically connected to me and their spouses, this step cut the tree down to around 10,000.

For each direct ancestor, I initially included all their descendants, (sometimes going down 4 or 5 generations from the direct ancestor) but when tree again approached 20,000+ people, I put further restriction on the descendants of direct ancetors, only including their immediate children and their spouses. My tree is a now a manageable 5,000 people.

It wasn't a case of FH being unable to cope, far from it, but with too many people, I couldn't give each one the attention they deserved.

My attention is now focused on Quality rather than Quantity, and I now feel in control

But as ColeValeyGirl said, each to their own

Gowermick wrote: ↑

21 Feb 2022 17:28

My attention is now focused on Quality rather than Quantity, and I now feel in control

But as ColeValleyGirl said, each to their own

I'm not convinced I'm prioritising Quantity over Quality, but I know what you meant to say

I've had several instances of apparently irrelevant individuals who have provided the clue to a brick wall. Plus of course, DNA relatives don't always relate to the direct line.

Plus there are plenty of people who aren't researching their own trees. There's a tree on Ancestry that faithfully adds any information I've added to my tree. For years I couldn't see a relationship, but shrugged and moved on. In conversation with my sister yesterday I mentioned that this individual seemed to be researching her daughter's N tree, and did she know how he was related to her daughter's father as I couldn't work it out.

Her: What's their name.
Me: SM from Canada
Her: Well my goodness... Ten years ago N and I were on a Nile cruise, and we met an SM from Canada... He was a bit of a genealogy bore.

I guess it depends what you're most interested in: your unique and specialist family tree, or any family tree that gives you the thrill of the chase

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

21 Feb 2022 17:49

Plus of course, DNA relatives don't always relate to the direct line.

Eh! doesn’t compute. What do you mean?

Surely, DNA relatives always relate to the direct line, even if remotely.

Gowermick wrote: ↑

21 Feb 2022 18:47

Surely, DNA relatives always relate to the direct line, even if remotely.

If you go back far enough. However, if the link isn't obvious, and you have a DNA match on a line that doesn't seem to be direct, it can help you sort things out (or in).

tatewise wrote: ↑

21 Feb 2022 16:39

Pardon? In what way?

The way you described it adding a person with their partner + offspring in a note vs the way I have always done it as ColeValleyGirl described.

I add anyone to my tree that I find connected (by family or otherwise) in support of the FAN principle

OK but a line has to be drawn somewhere. Otherwise, you will eventually have everyone in the World in your tree
When you inevitably draw that line, and know some details about spouses & children do you just discard those details or record them somewhere? If so, where?

Miketate,
It was very easy to get caught out when I first applied my restriction at stopping at great-grandchildren of direct ancestors, So I added a ‘Stop’ graphic to these children, to remind me to proceed no further. Without it, I often added further descendants by mistake.

I now stick rigidly to my own rules, and ignore everything about those individuals beyond my defined limits.

With regards original question, when the spouse of a direct ancestor re-marries, I do not add the new partner as an invidual to my tree, but simply add a note to the spouse, stating details of any further marriages.

i perform a full research for the spouse, even after direct ancestor has died but do ignore any new partner(s). The notes are particularly important for females, as without details of further marriages, I would be unable to trace them, as they change their surnames on every marriage.

tatewise wrote: ↑

21 Feb 2022 22:47

OK but a line has to be drawn somewhere. Otherwise, you will eventually have everyone in the World in your tree

A bit of an exaggeration, Mike, and by your you know that. Nobody -- not even you -- has the time to research everyone ever in the history of the world.

When you inevitably draw that line, and know some details about spouses & children do you just discard those details or record them somewhere? If so, where?

For me, there is no 'inevitable' line, or hard and fast rules about who I research. If I've discovered the information, I record it; if it's relevant to my main project, that's where I record it. And it has proven very useful.

For example, I recorded the children by her first husband of an ancestor's second wife -- no blood relationship to me at all -- but I found the information easily enough while trying to work out what her birth name was. (I still don't have the answer to that). Said ancestor W and his second wife C vanished from the West Midlands after the 1891 census when she was 57 and he was 58, but I couldn't find a death for either of them between 1891 and 1901. Looking to apply the FAN principle, I followed W's children by his first wife forward -- all of them bar one remained in the West Midlands, but one emigrated to Ohio in 1890. No sign of their father with any of them after 1891.

However, one of them had emigrated to Ohio and was living in 1891 with a couple with the surname Morris. Which is a very common surname, but happens to be the surname of C's first husband. And the name of the male in the couple was the same as one of C's sons...

So I tracked all C's children forward, and found three of them emigrated to Ohio. One was the son who was sharing lodgings with W's son. The other two were daughters who had been living with W and C in 1891, and emigrated in 1893. And emigrating with those two daughters (but badly misindexed)? W and C.

I would never have found them if I didn't record the details of C's children because they were unrelated to me

I'm pretty much with Helen (ColeValleyGirl) here Mike.

To be honest, I have never really considered where I will/would draw the line at who I record. As Helen says, it's sometimes helpful to have them recorded, and if I found information on them, I record it.
It was only seeing this thread that opened my eyes to a different way to record a family, but not one I would likely use.
Interesting nonethless.

neil40 wrote: ↑

22 Feb 2022 16:07

... As Helen says, it's sometimes helpful to have them recorded, and if I found information on them, I record it. ...

Just to throw another idea into the ring - for dim, distant and possibly unconnected families, I will sometimes use my Ancestry tree, instead of loading them into my FH tree. For instance, I'm just working with a William Purcell of Montana, who, in FamilySearch FamilyTree, has been identified with my Grandad's cousin of the same name - they're both born in Cheshire, about a year or so apart. The work I've been doing on the Montana guy is basically:

• Here's why he's different from Grandad's cousin;
• And here's who he really is.

It's especially convenient to do this in Ancestry because the Montana vital records, or indexes to them, are on Ancestry, so can be connected easily.

Of course, what this then means is that it becomes totally impossible / very messy to sync my Ancestry tree to my FH tree (via whatever this year's favoured method of doing that is). It would have been better to have created a second "Kite Flying" tree in Ancestry for that purpose.