But I have many ‘females’ in my database that I do not know if they are using there family surname or married surname, ie Jane Smith died blah blah blah, from such and such town.
How do other people cope as to whether its a family surname or married surname.
I have been doing this for over 30 years and I still get stumped. I am trying to purge these records to reduce database size, as I do not believe these records are relevant, unless there is any other info attached that might be useful.
@gray --Tom is right that there are many good discussion on here BUT as to your question–there must have been a reason you add JANE SMITH in the first place UNLESS you just downloaded family info files from Ancestry or Familysearch–a quick check for additional info on Ancestry or family search MIGHT tell you how she is connected–a 2nd wife of your g-grandfather who helped raise his kids or a half sibling of your 2nd g-grandfather who never married-- when in doubt you can always use ?? or unknown ( sister of Mark Harmon) or leave the last name blank–then put a general note that says she was listed as a sister in Mark Harmon’s obit
In my view it is wrong to have the primary name (and/or only) name as Married name. I add the Birth/Maiden name as primary. I use an SQL script to manually add married names. So this their multiple (sometimes more than 4 or 5) married name so on reports if/when needed. Often other people are unaware of previous or subsequent marriages. I do not use characters such as ____ or ??? for unknown surnames. I might use “Unknown Wife” if both are unknown.What you decide is what you decide – its your tree. The biggest challenge is when you are viewing other peoples trees.
Sorry for the late response. but many thanks for your informative responses.
My original tree data were just entered as a flat database into an old Acess database (that only had 5 fields, but over 6128 entries) and then imported into PAF v5.
Over the years I unfortunatly used ?? and other characters for unknown surnames and christian names, also totally different abbreviations for address’s.
Still trying to correct these as I go on with Rootsmagic.
I have an odd one, where a couple were officially married and had children. The husband died. But just to stop tongues wagging, the husbands brother took over as husband (unoffical), with children produced. ??
Odd is right. My lady was married to Mr. X for many years. He died, she moved to different state. Married Mr. Z. He died and she moved back to 1st town and started using Mrs. X again since they knew her as that LOL.
I have two cases where a Slatter married a Slatter. One I know was a first cousin. The other I have not figured out if it is a cousin marrying a cousin or the marriage of a widow of a Slatter.
I have a lot of family files-- different branches of his lines , my lines and ones that I have researched for friends so I have seen abt everything except a brother marrying a sister–my 2nd g Aunt and her hubby were both Schmidts BUT NOT related to each other as far as I can tell ( unless DNA in the future would prove it.)…
My g-grandma married a 2nd time after the 1910 census and divorced before the 1920 census, so nobody including her grandchildren knew she married a 2nd time as she is always found in the census under her 1st married name…
I have found a lot of people who say in a census they are widowed and 20 years later find their spouse alive and well living with the kids in another state…
Besides using familysearch/Ancestry to find marriage/ death etc, you need to check obits for siblings and do a general newspaper search of the local papers as even a small tidbit in a newspaper such as Mrs Johnson was visiting her son Perry and Jack Benson can lead to a 2nd marriage ( which sometimes MIGHT give her parents names)–another trick is to just google genealogy Emma Benson-- I ended up with a biography for her sister in Idaho that gave me her maiden name and let me take the line back several more generations-- just try thinking outside the box.