Linking unrelated people

[Mick Reed]

Hello

I'm using Reunion 11 and came to it after using The Master Genealogist (TMG) on a Windows machine for years.

What I could do in TMG was to easily link unrelated people to related people. An example would be that my great-great-aunt Jemima might have a lodger, Jack Jones, in the 1861 UK census. TMG made this 'relationship' obvious through its 'witnesses' feature. Reunion does not (so far as I can see), so that Jack Jones shows up as an island of one person but it's not obvious what he is doing in my database and so requires cumbersome delving to find out..

The only way I can think of to link him to Aunt Jemima, is to add a note to his entry, and also to hers, showing the relationship.

This problem applies to many issues, eg witnesses to marriages, etc.

Is there a way in which the link between Jack and Jemima can be made without adding notes?

Hope that's clear.

Cheers

Mick

[Mick Reed]

Re: Linking unrelated people

Is there a way in which the link between Jack and Jemima can be made without adding notes?

I think I've answered my own question. It seems that the GEDCOM standard has an Association tag (ASSO) which links everyone associated with a person. This is an extremely valuable feature but Reunion, it seems, doesn't have it and so simply ignores it on import thus losing valuable information.

Thanks to Keith Riggle http://genealogytools.com/family-tre...pps-crosswalk/

I guess I'll have to add notes as I suggested in my original post. It's not good though.

Cheers

[Kim]

Re: Linking unrelated people

This won't do exactly what you want, but here is what I do for 'unrelated' people. I have flags set up for each of my major family lines. Whenever I enter anyone, I immediately check at least one of the family flags. That way I always know at a glance at least a little about where a person fits in. When I enter the name, I add at least one source; a census, and obit, or something, and in the detail I add a relationship; "son of Michael Jones".

In you case I would add the Jack Jones and check the JEMIMA flag. I would then as the census as a source to the name field and in the detail space I would add "boarder of Aunt Jemima"

[Maurice Mézière]

Re: Linking unrelated people

What I could do in TMG was to easily link unrelated people to related people. An example would be that my great-great-aunt Jemima might have a lodger, Jack Jones, in the 1861 UK census. TMG made this 'relationship' obvious through its 'witnesses' feature. Reunion does not (so far as I can see), so that Jack Jones shows up as an island of one person but it's not obvious what he is doing in my database and so requires cumbersome delving to find out..

The only way I can think of to link him to Aunt Jemima, is to add a note to his entry, and also to hers, showing the relationship.

This problem applies to many issues, eg witnesses to marriages, etc.

Is there a way in which the link between Jack and Jemima can be made without adding notes?

Hello Mick,

You could be interested by this thread in the wish list "Hyperlinks in the Note Field?"
It is not exactly what you ask for but I suppose this would meet your need.
In a message, I explain what I do to fulfill my need.

[donworth]

Re: Linking unrelated people

Well, the "Child Status" field has everything from "adopted" and "god child" to "family pet" and "alien abductee" in it. So I suppose you could link to the unrelated person that way. You could add a new child status option (eg. "lodger"). It's a little weird, but you can color code lodger and mark it sensitive so that it doesn't appear in reports.

I've done something along these lines for situations where I am tracking everybody in a given county with the same last name but I don't know how or if they are related but want them grouped together under a "pseudo parent" until I figure it out.