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Question- When it asks for the name of a female, is the birth name to be used or married/current name? Just looking over the family search site, I don't see a spot that designates married or maiden names.
On a tree only use the last name they were born with.
Question- When it asks for the name of a female, is the birth name to be used or married/current name? Just looking over the family search site, I don't see a spot that designates married or maiden names.
Maiden name. If you're using family search to look for records, search page, enter the maiden and as much info as you have including parents and spouse. If that doesn't bring up records, try removing most of the info, then use their maiden name with spouse and if that doesn't work use their married last name with spouse. Also with DOB I've found that those born back in the 1800's that some really were not sure when they were born. I've seen one that said born 1828, then the next census says 1848. You have to play around with the fields; you'll see what I mean once you start matching records.
Family search also gives hints on the person's profile so you can go back and look at those then attach whatever records it suggests
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Originally Posted by HappytobeinTroy
WOW!!! I posted this and left on vacation, came back to a wealth of knowledge!! Thanks so much for your advice and information. Now off to get started!
My big concern is finding false info and following it. I'll try to be patient and stay on track.
This may seem like an odd question but would you include an ex as part of the family tree if the marriage was short and/or there were no children involved? I guess that ex would be a part of the family.
I do have some previous info so I will start with that resource. Thanks again!
Whether to include someone or not depends mostly on what you want your tree to include. Is the bride in your family and whether the bride kept the married name or went back to their maiden. How long was the marriage? Adding it may at some point help with records.
I know someone with an older sibling that's been married twice with no kids. The 1st marriage was during a census year, marriage was under 10 years. They included it because of the name change and census year. The 2nd marriage lasted over 10 years with another name change and during a census year. They divorced, she went back to her maiden name. Years from now someone may be interested in taking over and adding to the tree you started. They may not know there were marriages with no kids, wonder what happened to this relative and why their not on any census records.
Then you also may want to decide if you include marriages where there were no kids but they were together until the death of one spouse like my hubs grandmother that raised his mom and her brother from when they were very young (about 5). I don't know why they didn't have kids of their own but she was the only mother/ grandmother figure.
I always do my own research. If I copy something that I'm not sure of I will add a ? to their name so that I can easily see it. My main tree is on ancestry so I will add a note specifying what I'm not sure of. I also work with notepad and gmail, keep notes there. With gmail, you can easily write an email draft with info; I just don't send the email. It's easily found by clicking on drafts.
Question- When it asks for the name of a female, is the birth name to be used or married/current name? Just looking over the family search site, I don't see a spot that designates married or maiden names.
For women the convention is to use the maiden name for the original record since that will never change. Genealogy lets you add additional spouses, then you know what additional surnames to search. For example, the maiden name will find census records before the first marriage. A search using the married name will pick up census records while living with that spouse.
When you are doing searches for a woman repeat the search using all known surnames.
If you exclude exes you may not be able to find records for a woman while she was married to a man who becomes an ex. What do you do for children born to divorced couples?
If you exclude exes you may not be able to find records for a woman while she was married to a man who becomes an ex. What do you do for children born to divorced couples?
I wouldn't care about the woman since she wasn't related so why would I want her records?
In an earlier post I mentioned ex's that they did not have children with. If they had children they are included. Short marriage no children not included.
I wouldn't care about the woman since she wasn't related so why would I want her records?
In an earlier post I mentioned ex's that they did not have children with. If they had children they are included. Short marriage no children not included.
My great uncle married one sister and my great great uncle married another sister. The great uncle and wife didn't have kids that I am aware of, but my searching the sisters, I was able to find the only picture of my great uncle I have ever seen. These people are hints whether blood related or not.
Sometimes following the spouse's family will give you more hints of where the blood relative lived or identify them. I found a newspaper article on the newspaper dot com website with three mens names. I knew my relative lived in the area and his last name is unusual, but the newspaper article identified all three men with first two initials and last name. That could be a number of people until I realized one guy was a future brother in law and the other guy was a 'business partner' who lived with him in the 1910 census. I was able to positively identify my relative because I included the brother in law on the family tree.
I wouldn't care about the woman since she wasn't related so why would I want her records?
You should want records of her while she was with your ancestor. Like their marriage record, divorce record or her death record depending on whether their marriage ended with divorce or death, any census records of them together, etc. Why would you not want the complete story of your ancestor's life? I do not go to the trouble of researching spouses unrelated to me from before they were married, but certainly I document their marriage because that was an important part of my ancestor's life. I guess if you are just trying to collect the names of people related to you, it's not important, but that seems like a shame - I'm interested in their life story, and that includes any marriages/spouses they had, even if no children came of it.
Holy Cow!!! Someone has done a ton of work on my family tree. Lines go all the way to 1550 on my dads side! This is so interesting!
Be careful when looking at other people's trees - especially when they go back that far. Many people's research is not reliable - you really need to comb through their sources (if they even have any) and verify the information before you accept it as fact.
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