Linking siblings without assigning parents

[Tony Knight]

Many years ago I decided that I would not normally include the parents/earlier ancestors/siblings of anyone marrying into my database. The reason for this was simply to constrain the growth of numbers, as once someone is in my database I do not ignore them.
I have though many instances of siblings marrying in and would like to link them without adding to the number in the database. I have, for instance, a number of plural marriages, but not all of their siblings who practiced this.
At one time in my pre-Mac and early Windows days the layout of the Family View in Family Tree Maker was such that you could add a sibling to an existing parentless person without being asked to provide parents. This changed, I think about the time it ceased to be a Windows program and became a .Net Application.
When I switched to Reunion about two years ago, the methodology seemed to be the same, though I did look at the manual and try a few tests to see if I could do what I wanted. I have periodically revisted the question and am still without a solution.
Can anyone help?

Thank you

[jbastin]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

Many years ago I decided that I would not normally include the parents/earlier ancestors/siblings of anyone marrying into my database. The reason for this was simply to constrain the growth of numbers, as once someone is in my database I do not ignore them.
I have though many instances of siblings marrying in and would like to link them without adding to the number in the database. I have, for instance, a number of plural marriages, but not all of their siblings who practiced this.
At one time in my pre-Mac and early Windows days the layout of the Family View in Family Tree Maker was such that you could add a sibling to an existing parentless person without being asked to provide parents. This changed, I think about the time it ceased to be a Windows program and became a .Net Application.
When I switched to Reunion about two years ago, the methodology seemed to be the same, though I did look at the manual and try a few tests to see if I could do what I wanted. I have periodically revisted the question and am still without a solution.
Can anyone help?

I've run into that issue before; when I want to add someone and don't currently have parent informtation, I just create parents (or just one parent) and put "Unknown" in the name field. This allows me to add the person I want, and also makes me aware that this is a family that requires more research.

Hope this helps.

[Tony Knight]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

I've run into that issue before; when I want to add someone and don't currently have parent informtation, I just create parents (or just one parent) and put "Unknown" in the name field. This allows me to add the person I want, and also makes me aware that this is a family that requires more research.

Hope this helps.

Thank you, but I generally know who the parents are, I simply do not wish to include them together with any other siblings who are not in the database. Unless I ignore the siblings, one family alone might add at least 1000 people.
I would like a formal link rather than say rather than a note saying they are related.

[ttl]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

Thank you, but I generally know who the parents are, I simply do not wish to include them together with any other siblings who are not in the database. Unless I ignore the siblings, one family alone might add at least 1000 people.
I would like a formal link rather than say rather than a note saying they are related.

Other than naming the notional parent "Sibling Link" or something like that, this sounds like a post for the Wish List forum.

[Tony Knight]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

Other than naming the notional parent "Sibling Link" or something like that, this sounds like a post for the Wish List forum.

Thanks Tim. I suspected that

[genealogist.lily]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

Thanks Tim. I suspected that

I am flabbergasted by your desire to

[Frank Zwolinski]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

For my use, I simply place a question mark in the first name field of the father. That allows me to add children with no problem. In my case, however, I just do that when I do not know the name of the parent.

Frank

[Tony Knight]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

I am flabbergasted by your desire to —not— enter parents of spouses, thereby missing the connection of siblings with the same parents or second cousins etc. Lily

My file has 243 interfamily marriages, but perhaps I should explain more.

I have just over 150,000 people at present and this grows in any event by around 1,000 per month. In addition to relatives I have in effect a One-Name Study and have tens of thousands of people who are not in any way connected with me and mine, as well as one family name which exists in one area, but as two "tribes" as one relative put it, who have absolutely no connection with each other.

Divorce is virtually unknown in the UK before 1950, you are more likely in my UK records to come across bigamy, or marriages which were prohibited such as to deceased wife's sister, or the other way round. However amongst my American records not only is it common practice from the 19th century onwards, but there is the added complication because I have many many instances of Mormons, of plural marriage.

Because of these instances of multiple marriages, often to people who have been married before, more and more people get dragged into the database even with the constraints I apply, they may then subsequently leave the marriage and marry again.

To give an example. At least one person amongst other spouses, is married to the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith (and from memory subsequently to Brigham Young) . I do not list Joseph's parents, although I know that I also have at least two of his siblings married to others, because I would the feel for completeness I would have to include all the other siblings, spouses and descendants, although their relevance is somewhat limited.

I can make a note, or create a fact to show there is a relationship, but a demonstration of this in Family View, if there were a way to do it, would, for me, be more helpful.

[Bob White]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

Many years ago I decided that I would not normally include the parents/earlier ancestors/siblings of anyone marrying into my database..........I have periodically revisted the question and am still without a solution......Can anyone help? ..Thank you

I truly doubt that you will ever get what you are looking for. In writing software for genealogy, it is a given that all persons have one male and one female parent. Having said that, my approach is:

1. I don't need to record the parents of the spouse of a 3C2R who lived and died in the first half of the 20th century. So, I don't. Neither the spouse or spousal parents are related to me, thus I won't spend the time to research them. I'm comfortable with that and the software works just fine.

2. I don't need to record all the information about any children of that union. If data about said children came to me with the husband and wife's data, I will add to the Notes "For Further Research:" then list the names of the children along with year born and year died.. I have no plan to actually research; the information is for anyone else that I share with. If no data, I don't search for any data.

[Tony Knight]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

I truly doubt that you will ever get what you are looking for. In writing software for genealogy, it is a given that all persons have one male and one female parent..

Indeed. But from my point of view I have gone backwards. In another program, in another operating system,in another decade I could.

I could have a person in Family View, sat in the children portion of the screen, and could add siblings and leave the parents blank.

[Tony Knight]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

The following seems to work.

I had noticed that if I imported a gedcom from Rootsweb, I could end up on places usage with an entry Family No Spouses. So basically two blank parents with a date and/or place of marriage and a child. There is no impact on the people total.

I had tried to recreate this within Reunion for those I wanted, but failed.

So this morning I did the following which seems to work. I tried a variation first which did not.

I pulled in a gedcom consisting solely of one person, a sibling of one of two brothers I wanted to link.(The object was to limit the amount of data I pulled in) This gave me my spouseless family. I changed the name and dates to those of one of the brothers and merged. I then attached the brother to the spouseless family and I have what I want. It survives quitting and restarting

[Bob White]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

Indeed. But from my point of view I have gone backwards. In another program, in another operating system,in another decade I could.

I could have a person in Family View, sat in the children portion of the screen, and could add siblings and leave the parents blank.

If that is true, my suspicion is that the program that you were using was a "card file" like Hypercard that used to come with every Mac back in the day. A record was a card and you could fill in any blanks or leave the blanks blank --- but you couldn't do at least 75% of what we can do with current software. There were equivalent programs on the dark side.

[Bob White]

Re: Linking siblings without assigning parents

P.S. Forgot to mention that the original Reunion was done in Hypercard.