Family Historian User Group

Hi,

I've found some information from bayanne.info that possibly solves my conundrum of which Gilbert Hay from Shetland my ggg grandmother Helen Gordon married (from what's in Shetland's records there were two possible Gilberts around her age).

But so far I have no proof that these people (Gilbert and his parents/siblings) are correct apart from this link someone else has made. (I've queried the db owner and he couldn't find who it was. I need to start with Aberdeen records where they married in 1827, I've found their banns so far but it has naff-all info about Gilbert, and he didn't appear in any censuses with her, so I know nothing else about him so far.)

I can mark every 'fact' about them as Tentative, but what I'd really like to do is mark the whole person as Tentative, and it'd be even nicer if they'd show in the family tree as tentative by colour-coding.

I wouldn't normally do this, but given how hard it gets to go further back, I'd like to add these people so I can look up more info on them and hopefully get the missing links as I do more research.

Any ideas on how to Tentative a whole person, please?

Many thanks

Would a 'Tentative' flag do the job? You could display it on the main tab in the property box, and use it to colour code a diagram.

I add the relevant individuals to a named list and set a box condition which colours their boxes and sets a "question mark" icon beneath each box.

I have a media record consisting of a question mark image that I attach to each relevant person. That displays in reports, diagrams and the FH interface with little, if any, additional customisation.

ississi wrote: ↑

06 Sep 2022 10:18

... Any ideas on how to Tentative a whole person, please? ...

I would encourage you to think what "tentative" means and record that somewhere. For instance, it sounds to me like Gilbert Hay actually existed (maybe two of them even?) So what's arguably tentative is the connection between the Gilbert Hay in question and Helen Gordon. That's a whole different ball-game from saying "Don't know who Helen married but the naming pattern of later children suggests he might have been named Gilbert..." (For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not in favour of entering people based on naming patterns but am happy for someone to prioritise searches based on those names.)

The problem with my literal suggestion is that it's even more difficult to mark up marriage relationships as tentative, although Associated persons might be the way.

You might very well think that this is getting way too complicated and difficult to do - it probably is, especially if you have no reason to have Gilbert Hay in your tree otherwise, but I'd encourage you to at least write notes against Gilbert Hay that draw a distinction between what you know about the real GH, and what you are speculating about the connection between him and Helen Gordon. That's along with whatever method you choose to Tentative (Tentivate?) them...

AdrianBruce wrote: ↑

06 Sep 2022 13:56

The problem with my literal suggestion is that it's even more difficult to mark up marriage relationships as tentative, although Associated persons might be the way.

I think I would agree with Adrian, that in this case there is nothing "tentative" about either Gilbert Hay, so "marking them" as tentative is probably not appropriate.

Zero'ing in on what is tentative is that Gilbert Hay(A) may be your great great great grandfather, but then so might Gilbert Hay(B)! I think this is more "unknown" or "undetermined" than tentative; it only becomes tentative when you become pretty sure (but not certain) that is is A and not B (or vice versa).

Within diagrams you can have a number of trees. You can set a box condition so that if an individual is not in the same relationship pool as you (i.e. a different tree), they show up differently. The expression allows you do do something (I remove the box shadow) if the individual is not related to the root individual - me - although I could insert my record's ID instead of fileroot()).

If you are tentative about a whole tree supplied by a third party, first you need to question whether you are going to take it into your data.

If you use FH as a means to directly produce "publishable" output - reports, books, web-sites etc. you really only want to put in stuff that you are willing to stand by.

If on the other hand you just use FH as a structured way to hold genealogical information which you then draw on when you are "writing family history", you may choose to add the unverified or unproven information but flag it and get that flag to alter how it shows in diagrams. Diagrams are my main means of working so when I am entering unverified information or speculatively searching for a link, I flag every individual as say "unverified" in the tree and use the flag to remove or change the box border as a means of making it look as if they are "pencilled in". I am not totally happy about this.

When doing speculative work you may be looking at a tree which in itself is reasonably easily verifiable - it is just one relationship - usually between that tree and yours which is uncertain!

I would like to find a way to mark just the origin person in these trees (Gilbert Hay(A) and Gilbert Hay(B) in your case) as unverified and then set up a box condition along the lines of "if anyone in this tree is marked as unverified, automatically apply the 'unverified family link' indicator to all in the tree".
So you would set the origin person as one level of uncertainty (due to the unverified link) and everyone else in that tree - whilst possibly internally certain - is uncertain as relatives of you.

Different levels of "speculative" - but you may be certain of say the parents of Gilbert Hay(A) and of Gilbert Hay(B) and want to explore their families speculatively in case you find the family of a previously unrecognised great niece or nephew in a census.

You may want to support wish list items (or just read the discussions associated with them):
Configurable line on Diagram based on relationship type
Flag a relationship as Tentative

..... my conundrum of which Gilbert Hay from Shetland my ggg grandmother Helen Gordon married (from what's in Shetland's records there were two possible Gilberts around her age).

Bear in mind that if there were two Gilbert Hays of similar age in Shetland they may well have been related. So if you are able to trace both of them back further you might find that the lines converge again because they have the same grandfather or great grandfather.

Also, if you know that 'your' Gilbert Hay married in Aberdeen in 1827, see if you can find any records of the 'other' Gilbert Hay in Sheltland after that date. Did the other one marry in Shetland and subsequently appear in censuses there? (There are some Gilbert Hays in early census records in the Shetland Islands.) Of course you might still be unable to work out which Gilbert was the son of which parents, but it's worth recording everything you can find.