Family Historian User Group

Hi everyone

I have a family that's behaving oddly (don't we all)!

Mary married John and had two children. John died and subsequently Mary married Lachlan and had three children.

The marriages and the children all appear to list correctly in the focus window (for the applicable spouse), the children also appear to list correctly in the MAIN tab of the property box, BUT, in the FACTS tab of the property box there are no 'Birth of....' facts listed for any of the children (for the applicable spouses).

Additionally, there are spouse tabs in the property box for John and Lachlan, BUT, there is an additional '<no spouse>' marriage tab for Mary that I can't delete.

I haven't seen the '<no spouse>' marriage tab issue before, but I have just noticed that I do have some other marriages where children are listed for a couple in the focus window, but not in the Facts tab for the individual as 'Birth of....' facts.

Do I have a switch set incorrectly somewhere or anoter issue entirely?

Thanks for any help

Cheers
Wayne
Melbourne, Australia

Hi Wayne
I may be able to solve your first problem.
At the end of the row of icons at the bottom of the Facts box there is a Cog Wheel.
Click on this and it will open to show a Timeline Facts.. tab.
Open this and you will get a list of facts for B, M, D of family members. Select those you want and they will appear in the Fact list for their mother.
As for your second problem.
Your screen shot shows Lachlan with 4 children from a total of 5. If you select John as the husband, does he show any children? I suspect that the <no spouse> Tab has appeared due to children being linked to the wrong parent/parents.
There will also be a Family record created for Mary and <no spouse> and you will not be able to delete him until the Family record is deleted.
I am sure that this will be clarified when the Northern Hemisphere wakes up, but I am pretty certain that your first problem should be solved .
Cheers
Roger
Wollongong

North/South makes no difference - it's the fact that in the UK we are 9 to 11 hours behind the Australians (and can't do a damned thing about it!) that is the issue (but we are always 5 to 8 hours ahead of the Americans - which is some compensation)!

Learning to use the "All" tab can help solve a lot of these problems as it gives you a closer idea as to what is in the GEDCOM.

For a multiply married spouse their "All" tab could look like: Points to note:

• Column widths are adjustable (as with a spreadsheet) to show detail
• An item starting with a "+" in a box will open on clicking the plus to show "branch details"

You should see two "Spouse families" - but you may see the extra, possibly spurious, one as well!

("Families" are a bit of a misnomer - they are more "spousal type relationships".)

If you double-click on the family tree icon before the "... with [spouse]" that will take you to the particular "family" property window (Main tab) - which will look pretty blank. Clicking on the "All" tab wil take you to something more useful: You should see links to the children of the particular relationship. (Expand the width of the first column if necessary to see the two partners in the first row). Note that double-clicking on the particular individual icon will take you to that individual's property box.

I detail this because I often find the all tab is the easiest way to "move children".

If a child is to moved to a different couple, go to the child's "All" tab and right click on the first line on the tab (the name of the individual); this will bring up a context menu of valid branches of that individual's record that can be added.
You want to add a link to an "existing family record" (i.e. the "proper parents" of that individual). You will get warned (at least in V6) that you already have parents - for a moment that can be ignored.

The individual's all tab will then have two "parents family" lines - the one you do want (that you have just added) and the one you don't want. Select the one you don't want by clicking in the first (record) column where it says "parents family" and then press delete.

Once you have sorted the children so they are correctly showing under the right parents (I tend to use a diagram with the common parent as the diagram root) you can then look to see whether you have any spurious orphan records.

Wayne, unfortunately, the screenshots are incomplete, so it is difficult to be certain of the explanation.

As Roger says, one explanation is that the Timeline Facts settings are excluding Child Birth (Baptism/Christening) events.

It is not clear from your Main tab screenshot, but do the Children actually have any Birth, Baptism, Christening events? If not then they won't have Timeline Fact entries.

As Roger says, your Main tab screenshot identifies three Family groups and associated records:

1. Mary and Lachlan with 4 Children
2. Mary as a single parent probably with one or more Children
3. Mary and John with Children

Those Family groups do not match your description in several ways:

1. They are in the wrong chronological order. John should be on the left and Lachlan on the right.
   That is corrected by using the small black arrows to the right of the three Spouse tabs.
2. Mary and Lachlan are shown with 4 Children when you say they only had 3 Children.
3. Mary and <no spouse> implies she had Children with an unknown father.
4. Your Facts tab screenshot shows no Marriage to John, so I guess you have no Marriage event for them.

The Children and <no spouse> issues can be corrected in the Focus Window as follows:
In the Focus Window, all three Family groups should be shown when Mary FLETCHER is the Focus person.
I suggest you click Customize View... top right and ensure Record Ids is ticked.
For the three Focus Window families make a note of the Names & Record Id in square brackets for each Child.
In turn, right-click each Child row who is listed against the wrong parents and choose Unlink Record.
When all the Children are unlinked from the blank <no spouse> Family group it should automatically get deleted.
Now use the Add Child links to add those Children to their correct parents using the Link Existing Record option and choosing the Children just unlinked by Name and Record Id.

Back in the Main tab for Mary, the Children pane may need sorting into order by using the small black arrows on the right. Alternatively, use one of the other methods described in Sorting Children, Spouses & Facts into Date Order.

David describes an alternative method via the All tab which may also work.
He says "you may see the extra, possibly spurious, one as well".
There is absolutely no doubt ~ you will definitely see all three Spouse family items.
IMO working wirh the Focus Window is more visually obvious what changes are needed.
It is just like a mini-diagram.

The focus window always seems to promise so much but then not quite deliver (but then my FH use I think (V4) predates the focus window - so familiarity with the "All Tab" was useful)!

Now if (in the focus window) you could drag and drop children in this scenario between families! (If you pardon the expression when applied to children!) Being able to do that in diagrams could be interesting as well.

Even a context menu option (in the focus window, the property box and diagrams) to "move child" (using the existing "new or existing family" submenu) would tidy up the operation.

In the focus window you can reverse the order suggested by Mike - add the child as an existing record to the correct family and then remove the link from the wrong family - that way you do not "lose sight" of the child!

As with all family reconstructions, you have to take care afterwards to make sure your citations explain the new structure - not the old structure.

tatewise wrote: ↑

10 Jun 2022 09:48

Those Family groups do not match your description in several ways:

1. They are in the wrong chronological order. John should be on the left and Lachlan on the right.
   That is corrected by using the small black arrows to the right of the three Spouse tabs.

Having the Family groups tabs in chronological order is not important. You can have them in any order to suit yourself.

However it is important to understand that the left to right order of these Family group tabs actually sets the "Family \ Spouse \ Husband \ Wife" hierarchy (FAM[1], FAM[2] - SPOU[1], SPOU[2], etc.).

I set all my Direct Line Family groups as the left hand tab, so that they are all FAM[1], SPOU[1] --- this makes queries and reports simpler to manage!

Roger, Mike, David, Peter,

Thank you ALL for your detailed responses - from each of you I've learnt something new and ultimately solved both of my problems, and of course, I end up with another question... is there some logic behind the 'ADD CHILD' (and for that matter probably also the 'ADD MOTHER/FATHER') links in the FOCUS window that I need to understand? I assumed (obviously now incorrectly), that adding a child and linking it to its two parents would 'automatically' create an empty 'birth' fact for the child that would be reflected in both of the parent's fact listings in the PROPERTY box - but it appears not (thank you Mike, that was the cause of one of my original problems).

To me, that seems illogical and I wonder if there is a 'trick' that would see these empty birth facts created when I add a child using this method, with no other data available, other than a name?

Thanks again.

Wayne
Melbourne, Australia

Wayne, in FH there is no 'trick' for adding Birth, Marriage, Death, or any other Facts.

When Add Child (or any method) is used to create a new Individual record, you must enter the Name, Sex, and Facts known about the person. The parent-child relationship should be derived from source documentation that provides some Facts with at least approximate dates and places. Many users start with such documents and use Source-Driven Data Entry to first capture the document details and then add the associated Facts with Citations. In the case of adding a child, one of the new Facts might be Birth, but equally might be Baptism, and either will display as a Timeline Fact.

Wayne, the important thing to remember if you opt to display timeline facts in an individual's Facts tab is that they are just that - Timeline facts. They are displayed in chronological order to give an overall picture of the sequence of family-related events in the individual's life.

Open the Select Timeline Facts dialog as explained by Roger in the first reply in this topic, then click the Help button in that dialog to see a full explanation of what can be displayed.

If you have no information recorded about the dates of any events in the child's life where would you expect to see them in the timeline? If you just want to see a list of an individual's children this is shown in the Focus window and in the Main tab of the Property box, in the Spouse section.

( 'Empty' birth facts which you suggest would not show in the timeline and would actually cause other problems. They result in sentences appearing in reports saying "He was born." Not very informative!)

Hi Mike and Lorna

Again, thank you. This all makes complete sense - particularly your last remark Lorna!

I'm getting there slowly...

Cheers
Wayne