Unreliable ancestors

Discussion in Feature Requests Forum started by Anthea Fraser Gupta, Feb 8, 2014
AG
Anthea Fraser Gupta
  website
Owing to some rather criminally inclined ancestors, I would be helped by the following features:

1. Some additional choices under partners, at the moment it is just 'married' and 'not married'. A good addition would be 'married bigamously' and also 'claimed father'.

2. Some way of indicating change of surname. One of my ancestors changed his surname (and his wife's, and those of his children already born), because (according to his grandchildren) he had murdered someone and was escaping the law. Although the reason can't be verified, the change of name is clear in census and birth records. Another ancestor was registered under the name of her mother's husband, but later changed her name to the surname of the man she claimed as her father on her marriage certificate.

If you want to see my solutions, the problem people are:

Hannah Pollock (uncertain partner and bigamous marriage)

Hannah Napier (later Dryden) (born illegitimate, later used alleged father's name)

Hugh Devine (the elder), later Hugh Shields (the murderer)

Hugh Devine (the younger), later Hugh Shields (the murderer's son)

Anthea

L
Les
  website
Hi Anthea, See if this will suit you.

Select one of those persons to EDIT.

You will see a FIELD EVENTS, if there is not a suitable one in there SELECT CUSTOM and NAME your own, such as MURDERER etc.

You can name date and place etc. This will now show under that PRSON ( It can be DELETED as you wish )

You can add more than one EVENT to a PERSON.

Give it a TRY.

Let me know how you get on, if my suggestion is feasable.

All the best

Les

AG
Anthea Fraser Gupta
Hi Anthea, See if this will suit you. Select one of those persons to EDIT. You will see a FIELD EVENTS, if there is not a suitable one in there SELECT CUSTOM and NAME your own, such as MURDERER etc. more ...
You can name date and place etc. This will now show under that PRSON ( It can be DELETED as you wish ) You can add more than one EVENT to a PERSON. Give it a TRY. Let me know how you get on, if my suggestion is feasable. All the best Le
Thank you, Les. Good suggestion. It gives more prominence to the name changes doing this. I don't know why I haven't used this option before! I discovered a person can only have one event of the same name, which doesn't help one of my distant great uncles who started as Napier, then became Dryden, then Napier Dryden!

I'd still like something for the bigamous marriages though. There seem to have been a lot of them about in nineteenth century England.

Anthea

L
Les
  website
Thank you, Les. Good suggestion. It gives more prominence to the name changes doing this. I don't know why I haven't used this option before! I discovered a person can only have one event of more ...
the same name, which doesn't help one of my distant great uncles who started as Napier, then became Dryden, then Napier Dryden! I'd still like something for the bigamous marriages though. There seem to have been a lot of them about in nineteenth century England. Anthe
Hi Anthea, would naming an EVENT ---BIGAMOUS MARRIAGE --- help, as you cam also put date and place, or where you are asked for PLACE you can enter any text.

Do a TET sample, as you can always DELETE if you wish.

All the best

Les

AG
Anthea Fraser Gupta
Hi Anthea, would naming an EVENT ---BIGAMOUS MARRIAGE --- help, as you cam also put date and place, or where you are asked for PLACE you can enter any text. Do a TET sample, as you can always DELETE if you wish. All the best Les
I think it would work for a bigamous marriage if there were no children, but when there are children, you want the father to appear as a relationship, but the choice is only 'married' or 'not married'. Bigamous marriages do seem to be odd in all the records, as they appear in the register as they took place, so are not flagged as bigamous. You only discover if you do a newspaper search.

I did it by putting (bigamous) after the marriage place, but a third alternative for couples would be good.

I could also do with a ?father too.... My ancestor Hannah Napier (along with several others) was the illegitimate daughter of Hannah Pollock, who was a widow: the surname 'Napier' that of her dead husband. At some point after Hannah's second marriage (her new husband was still married to someone else), and after moving to another town, the children born while she was a widow started using the surname 'Dryden', and on their own marriage certificates claimed a Thomas Dryden as their father. We will never know if Thomas Dryden (a married man with one child) was Hannah Pollock's sole and long term lover, or was one of several possibilities for being the father of one or more of her illegitimate children, or whether he was just someone she named in a bid for respectability.