Family Historian User Group

I have entered a large proprtion of my husband's family into FH and I am impressed that, too date, all the stumbling blocks I've encountered could be overcome by the flexibility of the software. However, my latest problem is causing some soul-searching!
By a bit of lateral thinking and a good deal of luck, I have recently found the birth name of a significant female of the tree I am researching. The trouble is, I am unsure the name I should use, particularly so that reports etc. make sense. Should I use the adoptive name, showing two sets of parents (well a single mother and the adoptive parents)? Or should I use the birth name? The latter looks strangely odd, when for your whole life you have known of her by the adoptive name.
Any help/advice in this area would be appreciated

ID:1067

A friend of mine had a similar problem, where a relative changed his name by deed poll at an early age. She got round this by entering both surnames in the name field, in the form 'Joe Bloggs (formerly Smith)'. This seems to work well for the reports etc. She then added a custom event for the change of name.

Not sure how it would work for a female who later married though.

HTH
G

If you search for Deed Poll you will find that any one can have as many name entries as you want on FH. This is the best way as you can add sources and notes to the name to clarify how, where and when the alternate name was used.

Thanks Jane, I'll pass it on as I'm not sure she knows about that.

G

I have a similar problem with a signicant male relative. His mother died when he was very young and he went to live with his wife's sister, who was married. He 'adopted' the surname of his uncle - I do not think a formal adoption process ever took place and the event happened before official records were kept.

His aunt died and his uncle then married a third sister. (This (to me) rare event has also occurred with another significant relation.)

I can successfully show him as an adopted child of the first marriage but not of the second. How can I show this in FH?

Thanks for the replies on naming - I've got that sorted out now.

Unlike other examples I've found on the forum and in the manual, the birth mother was not married when she had her daughter. Some years after she had the daugter adopted, the mother married and had children with her spouse.
Is there any way I can stop the Individual summary report showing her 'liaison' as Marriage (1), whilst still showing that she had a child?

Andrew anyone can have as many family as child as you need simply repeat the process you used to add them to the first adopted family.

Lesley, check on the All tab for the first family and ensure there is no marriage event, if there is delete it.

I'm probably doing something very stupid, but try as I might, as soon as I add the illegitmate child, I get a tab in the marriages section of the individual. If I go into the family record and remove the 'husband' I lose the child.
I can get the ancestors diagram to be correct, showing both 'families', but if you do an individual summary of the mother, I get two marriages. This is driving me mad, as it is so obviously not what I'm asking for!

They should not be two marriages, how ever there were two relationships even if one only lasted 20 mins. Use the Never Married flag to show that there was no marriage involved with the childs birth.

It is unusual for FH to create a spouse record, it just creates a family as spouse record for the second relationship. Are you actually deleting the family as spouse record?

FH is not actually creating a spouse but it is creating the family record for the liaison with the father of the illegitimate child. I guess is not a very accurate description in this case, but it is probably a better one than . I have several ancestors who worked as servants and had a child by their employer, I suspect they may not have been willing participants.

I have created a file test.ged and attached it to this posting. In the file Mary Smith has an illegitimate daughter Sarah. Mary later marries another man Peter Jones and they have a son Tim. Mary's daughter Sarah then has her own illegitimate child Ann. If I do an Individual Summary on Mary I get the following which suggests she was married twice, I assume this is your problem area.

I think the issue is a problem with how the report is worded. Obviously Mary's marriage to Peter Jones and their son is correctly shown. However the existence of her child Sarah also needs to be shown somehow on the Individual Summary sheet. Presumably Calico Pie had to make a decision here and it doesn't reflect the situation you have. I suggest you request a new feature something like 'improvement in reporting illegitimate children' to be added to the wish list (Jane, I can't see anything like this in the wish list, although it may be related to Add Illegitimate to relationship options). The feature may not be that simple to implement as it would also have to cope with present day unmarried couples with children who are living quite happily as a family unit; they might need reporting slightly differently from situations where the father is unknown or disappeared.

Finally I noticed a strange anomaly with the test file I created. If you do a descendent diagram for Mary Smith, a dotted rectangle is shown as the father of Sarah, but not for the father of Ann. The only difference being that Mary later married Peter and the dotted box is for consistency with the box containing Peter.

Sorry no attached test.ged, .ged is not an option for upload. The diagram shows everything anyway.

Prehaps the reporting should be changed to say 'family' rather than marriage, as marriage is an attribute of the family group (and reported as such).

Richard

Family is a possibility, but some might argue that Family is not a good description where the father plays no part in raising the child. Relationship may be another possibiilty but it sounds a bit contrived in some situations.

This still causes me problems. I was adopted and have birth & adopted names. I still can't get 'both of me' conveniently on diagrams and if you search through the forums you'll find earlier questions.
I've tried linking as same person, or putting a note or whatever, but it doesn't seem to work.
It doesn't actually matter but would be nice to sort!

vliet

You need the diagram options text scheme to allow a statement something like
(if %INDI.ADOP[1]% is false) %INDI.NAME[1]%
(if %INDI.ADOP[1]% is true) adopted name %INDI.NAME[1]%nbirth name %INDI.NAME[2]%

So if an adoption event exists for an individual it would show both name 1 and name 2 with name 1 listed as adopted name and name 2 as birth name (or the other way round if you prefer).  This is probably covered by 'If construct to select one of a selection of field' on the wish list.

Thank you Dave for your comprehensive posts. You have replicated exactly my problem, although I didn't notice the dotted box.  

Thanks to other contributors as well - At least I know it isn't just me being incompetent!

Thanks for that. Just refresh my memory - where do I type that code?
vliet

Sorry, I don't think I was very clear. What I meant was this level of logic doesn't exist yet (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) and you would need a structure similar to how I suggested in a future release of FH in order to do it. I believe this is covered by the wish list request I highlighted in my previous posting.

When the level of logic does exist you enter it by right clicking in a diagram and selecting Diagram Options. Chose the text tab and you can then enter this type of string in the Template box. I am sure this will be much better described in the tutorials or elsewhere on this site.

Once again, sorry if I misled you into thinking the functionality already existed.