Family Historian User Group

I have an individual who gives a fathers name on his married certificate but on his birth certificate there is no father. His Mother is Hannah Newsome and his father is Edward Newsome but I can't assume they were married. To add to the confusion, later in his life he took the name Roberts and had two sisters also called Roberts. How do I record this without creating a marriage that may not have existed?



ID:1615

I'm sure others will give more expert replies than me - but FH treats this as two separate issues. The first is who are the parents - the second is whether they were married. The latter is done via the marriage date - so if it is blank then there is no assumption of marriage.

I've got a similar thing where the child was definitely born out of wedlock (nothing on the birth cert for a father); the mother definitely married (but 2 years after the birth) and the child certainly thought that person was their father. I've covered that one with quite heavy use of notes.

HTH

Rob

Thank you for your response. Even with no date in the marriage field the diagram view does not distinguish between married and unmarried couples. I also have the problem that the Edward Newsome was who he believed was his father at the time of his marriage. Edwards record needs a big 'maybe' flag on it.

You could simply add a note to the diagram or add a flag and assign an icon in V3 to show the problem.

You obviously can't use the never married standard option, so just a flag for illegitimate may be what you need.