I like to create narrative reports for my tree, with the intent of publishing at some point. I have a few intermarriages - people married to their cousin. When I create the narrative report some of the children are listed under the mother’s lineage, I would prefer the children to be linked to the father’s lineage. Parents do not have the same last name. This creates a problem, because in the upline, the mother is listed not the father. Any suggestions? Thank you
I understand cousin marriages. I’m descended from lots of them. But I’m having a hard time picturing this particular problem with narrative reports. Are the reports descendant narratives or ancestral narratives? And if descendant narratives, which one (e.g., outline or register or modified register, etc.)
Descendant narrative from original planter in 1600s. He is descended on his mother & father’s side - his mother Mary Stickney married her cousin Balch. I would expect the program to use the father’s side for lineage, but it used the mother’s lineage. In Family Historian narrative reports, the he was listed 2x - under each parent.
I may not be understanding correctly, but I don’t think male lines vs. female lines nor cousin marriages has anything to do with your results.
RM’s Descendant Narrative reports have sort of a root person, not a root couple. In the options for the report, it’s called the Start Person. Uplines go back to the Start Person. It appears that Mary Stickney was your Start Person because the uplines go back to her. If you want the uplines to go back to Mary’s husband, then he would need to be the Start Person for the report. I apologize if I’m not understanding the situation correctly.
By the way, I’m a heavy user of RM’s Descendant Narrative reports. It doesn’t matter for this discussion, but I usually use the NEHGS (register) format. The issue of RM’s reports having a start person rather than a start couple is important in a minor way that’s actually important to me. Namely, the default title on each page is Descendants of [Start Person], but I want the title to be Descendants of [Start Couple]. But the best I can tell, that option doesn’t exist. As a result, I have to hard wire the the names of the start couple into the report options, and as a result of that I have to change that particular report option every time I change to a different start couple.
I haven’t found a way to pick up the name of the start couple in the report title automatically with a report option. And indeed, I’m aware that the idea of a start couple is a little fuzzy if one or both spouses had other spouses. But since the reports work from a start person rather than from a start couple, the reports will have all the start person’s spouses and all the descendants from all the spouses. I haven’t yet figured out how to do narrative reports when both spouses of the start couple have multiple spouses.
thank you Jerry, but my root person is the original planter, John Balch from the 1600s. The program designated the mother in the narrative report, not the father - both born in the 1800s.
What does it have when you follow the father’s of line descent? I believe both lines should be showing with their family.
Thanks for the info. I’m surprised. I will have to play with this to see if I can reproduce the problem.
I can reproduce the problem. This is a real report with real people - not a test database with made up people. Well, it’s a test database but it’s an exact copy of my production database. Here are the people.
I ran a five generation Descendant Narrative report for Henry Peters Sr. I looked at Henry’s second great grandson Alva Edward Peters in the report. I chose Alva to look at because Alva’s father and mother were both descended from Henry. I highlighted the instance of Henry that was in Alva’s paternal line. But the uplines were for Alva’s mother’s line, up through his mother Hulda Asberine Cross, grandmother Zipporah Peters, great grandfather Thomas Peters, and second great grandfather Henry Peters Sr.
I was expecting that Alva’s father John H. Peters would show the uplines for his branch of the family and that Alva’s mother Hulda Asberine Cross would show the uplines for her branch of the family. But instead, Hulda Asberine Cross showed the correct uplines and John H. Peters showed no uplines. In other words, John H. Peters did now show up as a great grandson of Henry Peters Sr. Instead, he only showed up as the spouse of Hulda Asberine Cross who was the great granddaughter of Henry Peters Sr.
So the problem seems to me to be more subtle than not just showing the desired uplines. In the case of John H. Peters, it is not showing his uplines at all. It seems to me that the problem is that because the report is only showing John H. Peters and Hulda Asberine Cross once, it’s losing the uplines for John and keeping the uplines for Hulda. That doesn’t seem right. On the other hand, when it shows the uplines for Alva, it’s hard to know which set of uplines should be the ones that are kept.
By the way, the rest of John H. Peters’ ancestors back to Henry Peters Sr. showed uplines. it was only John H. Peters himself who was missing the uplines. And it was surely because he was considered to be a spouse of a descendant of Henry Peters Sr. rather than actually being a descendant of Henry Peters Sr.
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Do you get the same results using RM7?
That was going to be my next test, but I have been away from the computer for several hours. Now that I am back to the computer, the answer is considerably more complicated than I realized. Let’s see if I can explain.
The short answer is that I get the same results with RM7 as with RM10. But as I said, the results with either version are considerably more complicated than I had realized.
- John H. and Hulda Asberine Cross are both in the report twice. John is in the report as himself and as the spouse of Hulda. Hulda is in the report as herself and as the spouse of John. They are both in the report twice because they are both descended from Henry Peters Sr.
- When John is in the report as himself, he has the correct up-lines back to Henry Peters Sr. When John is in the report as the spouse of Hulda, he has no up-lines.
- When Hulda is in the report as herself, she has the correct up-lines back to Henry Peters Sr. When Hulda is in the report as the spouse of John, she has no up-lines.
- When John H. Peters and his spouse Hulda Asberine Cross were listed as a couple, their list of children appeared in what I call the “list of children” that’s a part of the NEHGS (register) format.
- When Hulda Asberine Cross and her spouse John H. Peters were listed as a couple, their list of children appeared in what I call the “list of children” that’s a part of the NEHGS (register) format. In other words, the “list of children” for the couple that’s a part of the HEHGS (register) format appeared twice.
- The “list of children” does not include any up-lines.
- There were 14 children in the “list of children”.
- Of the 14 children, 11 of them had no spouse and no issue. Therefore, they were never carried forward to the next generation and they never had an up-line included in the report.
- The other 3 children each had a spouse or issue or both. Therefore, they were all carried forward to the next generation of the report. This includes Alva Edward Peters. But when they were carried forward to the next generation, none of the 3 children who had a spouse or issue or both were duplicated any further. The duplication ended at this point.
- When they were carried forward to the next generation, each of the 3 children did have up-lines. In all three cases, the up-lines went back up to Henry Peters Sr. through Hulda Asberine Cross rather than through John H. Peters. This is surely the key finding of this analysis.
- All subsequent generations of those 3 children also had up-lines that went back through Hulda Asberine Cross rather than through John H. Peters.
Whew, that’s a mess, and I think I got it right. And since I’m descended from Alva Peters, my up-lines go back to Henry Peters Sr. through Hulda Asberine Cross rather than through her spouse John H. Peters. The truth is, I have both up-lines, but it seems hard to show both up-lines in any sort of sensible fashion in a narrative report.
As complicated as this situation sounds, it’s really more complicated than I described it and I had to tell a little white lie to simplify it. That’s because 2 of the 3 children of John H. Peters and Hulda Asberine Cross who had a spouse or who had issue or both actually were duplicated in the report even though I said they weren’t. That’s because those 2 brothers also married a cousin. It was only the 3rd brother who married but didn’t marry a cousin who wasn’t duplicated in the report. Alva was one of the 2 brothers who married a cousin. So it took me a while to realize that he was not duplicated in the report because his parents were cousins who married. Rather, Alva was duplicated in the report because he himself had married a cousin.
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Thank you Jerry - that makes sense to me. When I look at it further, there was another cousin marriage within the same line. I’m not going to export again, because my tree is huge and I am currently reviewing & updating everyone. But, when I do export - I will look for your clues and see if I can adjust the lineage. I will look for duplicates within the report, and look at the uplines more closely. If it still is an issue, I will make the adjustments within the report itself. I have my notes and your analysis above. Thank you for taking the time to look at this more closely, much appreciated!!