* Assessment of a relationship rather than a fact

[Peter Collier]

If required I can assess the source cited for an event as questionable or unreliable, but is there a way to assess/flag a relationship in this way?

I have the following situation: I have traced a certain line back to a marriage in 1762. I have not as yet found any evidence for the birthdate or birthplace of the husband (no age on the burial or marriage records for example, and he's too early for a census). However, the parish in quesion is very small and after reading all of scanned images of the register I have found only one baptism record for a person of the same name (Thomas) from approximately the right time. On the balance of probablilties, this is very likely the Thomas I'm looking for. I can't be sure though, as I have nothing else to tie in the birthdate and I can't be certain that he was born/baptised in this parish - only that he was living there at the time of his marriage.

The baptsim record gives the name of both parents, so it's quite useful and I can probably use it to push back a couple of generations further from there, but there is small chance I'm barking up the wrong tree. I could assess the source as "unreliable", but really it isn't. The source is fine: someone of that name was surely baptised on that date. The uncertainty is to whether or not that Thomas and "my" Thomas are one and the same. What I would like to to do is flag the baptism event as tentative, which I can do easily , but then somehow also record the parents but with a source-like a assesment of the parental relatonship as "unrelaible", so it's clear these may not actually be Thomas's parents. Ideally, it would be something I could use to hang a suitable icon on in diagrams so it's immediately clear to me or the person looking at it that they are treading on dodgy ground if they proceed further up the tree in that direction.

[tatewise]

A technique that CP and others advise is to make the tentative father & mother Fact Witnesses to the Baptism or the Birth event with the Role of Father and Mother respectively.
Then add Notes and Citations to those Fact Witness entries with whatever you need to customise Reports & Diagrams.

[nomadandy]

Peter,

I wanted a similar function and have used a Family As Child Note for each individual which I have displayed in an extra field in the individual property box (underneath the standard Note field) and in an added column in the individuals records window. It feels like a clumsy way of recording the information, but in lieu of something better, it works for me.

I called it Proof of Relationship to Parents and the function is %INDI.FAMC[1].NOTE2[1]%. While I would have preferred to have a limited list of options (e.g. Proven by primary evidence, Known from secondary evidence, Known only from derived sources, Uncertain), the note field does have the benefit of being adaptable to whatever circumstances arise, so that in your case it would be possible to record the uncertainty in whatever way you choose.

Andy

[Hanning]

I attach a graphic as primary media to the person - silhouette with ? means parentage likely, silhouette with 2 ?? means parentage possible. Use silhouette with a tick if the persons parentage is confirmed by some other record than a birth/bapt/marr/death/burial record. Graphics attached for your interest.

[KFN]

After review I don’t think the use of the FAMC tag on Thomas would work as this tag (and it’s subtags) could be used to question Thomas’ connection to his parents but not the fact that the Baptism used in Thomas’ Individual_Record may be incorrectly assigned to the Thomas “father of this family.”

This construct of assigning facts to an individual of our database, where insufficient evidence exists of it being the correct individual does not play well with conclusion based genealogy.

The question is, do you record a fact where the fact is suspect (you have not concluded it to be true), or wait for additional information before making the conclusion on the source, therefore asserting the fact?

The SOUR.QUAY ( in the source_citation) which has a definition not really correct for this application may still be a best bet because it “questionable evidence”, but the citation should also include a NOTE explaining the reasons for the question!

[KFN]

As for adding parents to the baptismal Thomas, who may or may not be “your” Thomas.

GEDCOM v5.5.1 has a construct that in theory solves your problem. It is most likely not supported in FH (most applications don’t or use it incorrectly).

The INDI.ALIA tag could be used to point to an additional Thomas Individual_Record that contains his baptismal information and parents (therefore solving your initial baptism fact problem as well). The ALIA tag is defined as:

ALIA @<XREF:INDI>@

ALIA {ALIAS}:=
An indicator to link different record descriptions of a person who may be the same person.

[mjashby]

Yes, the Alias Tag is available in FH, and has been as far back as I can remember. Easy to add link(s) between possible matching individuals via the 'All' Tab.

Mervyn

[tatewise]

You can also customise the Property Box Main tab with the %INDI.ALIA[1]% tag and add Individuals there.

[Little.auk]

I like Hannings graphics idea - I adopted a similar technique using the attached image on my Ancestry Tree, to "Flag" children who had died very young.