Second marriage in Ancestral Source

lesleyl · Post by **lesleyl** » 04 Mar 2012 12:48

Firstly, it's brilliant to be able to enter the marriages - thank you [smile]

I've just entered the two marriages for one female relative. First marriage was straight forward and the text looked much as I had expected.
When I came to enter the second marriage, I used the same technique - picked the female from the list of names, set her status to widow and carried on. When I subsequently opened it in FH, the text shows her maiden name (the name that I had picked from the list), not the name from her first marriage.
It's easy enough to edit manually and it doesn't happen very often, but I just wondered if that was how it was designed to work?

Doesn't detract from what is a fabulous additional tool!

ID:5978

Post by **tatewise** » 04 Mar 2012 13:19

In general 'that was how it was designed to work'.

The Auto Text transcript (that ends up in Text From Source) obtains its text values from your GEDCOM data.

AS cannot 'see' the Marriage Certificate, so it is important that you check & correct the Auto Text to ensure it is a faithful transcript.

For example an Occupation may be Agricultural Labourer in your data, but it is commonly entered as Ag.Lab. on BMD/Census Records.
On Birth Certificates the mother is often entered as Jane Smith formerly Jones instead of just her maiden name.
To ensure the transcript is a literal representation of the source document then all these types of change need to be made.
However, if using AS Method 1, the transcript is only in one place in the Source field Text From Source, and so easy to change afterwards in FH.

lesleyl · Post by **lesleyl** » 04 Mar 2012 14:31

Thanks for confirming that is how it works and explaning why.

lesleyl · Post by **lesleyl** » 04 Mar 2012 15:57

But..... when entering a census event, using the same technique for picking a woman (i.e. picking her maiden name) results in her married name being included in FH, without any editing, so presumably AS is seeing the marriage event then? Or am I misunderstanding your explanation?
Incidentally, the census event is for the same female, during her first marriage.

Post by **NickWalker** » 04 Mar 2012 16:07

I've not put in anything for marriage records to try to anticipate the name given on the certificate if a second marriage. Perhaps it should - something for me to consider for a future version. As it is the usual advice always applies - the autotext transcript is only an educated guess as to what is on the certificate so you will almost certainly need to manually edit it in the source text box in AS before you save the data.

Best wishes

Nick

Post by **tatewise** » 04 Mar 2012 16:27

With Census records, AS has been around much longer, including its predecessor Gedcom Census, so it has evolved more intelligent guesswork.
AS is still just making an educated guess, that takes into account that the Head is in a Family record, there is (or is not) a Marriage event, and its Date relative to the Census Date.

This guesswork is only applied to the Head and Wife/Husband.
If the same people were entered further down the grid, then I believe the above guesswork is not applied.

Marriage records are a new addition to AS, and as Nick says above, may get better in time.
With multiple marriages it is more complex because AS does not know for sure which marriage certificate is being entered, until you enter the date.

lesleyl · Post by **lesleyl** » 04 Mar 2012 18:27

Nick, not complaining, I'm one happy lady [smile]

More an observation that I thought others might come across.
Think it's fab to be able to enter marriages with AS - been using it all afternoon as it was always such a chore to enter all the information in a consistent format before! I want to go back and do all the old ones too!!
[smile]

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