How to handle grandchild when parents are known

[Guest Michael Dietz]

I have a family, parents and four minor children, who are in the 1870 census. They are all there again in the 1880 census. Of course there is no 1890 census. In the 1900 census I can only find the parents with a new child and two of the earlier minor children with ther own families. Two of the earlier children are not in the 1900 census.

 

The child with the parents in the 1900 census is 8 years old. The parents are now both 68 years old which would have made the mother 60 when this child was born. This seems to imply the child is a grandchild. But which of the two missing earlier children (who I presume to be dead) or even the two existing children (the grandchild is visiting the grandparents) is the parent(s) of the 8 year old?

 

My question is how to handle this situation. I hate to arbitrarily pick one of the parents and assign them as the parent. Even making them non-primary doesn't seem right. I could list all four of the earlier children as the parent(s) of the grandchild with a cautionary not but that seems a bit of overkill.

 

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

Mike

[Roy_Delos_Reyes 0]

I have a family, parents and four minor children, who are in the 1870 census. They are all there again in the 1880 census. Of course there is no 1890 census. In the 1900 census I can only find the parents with a new child and two of the earlier minor children with ther own families. Two of the earlier children are not in the 1900 census.

 

The child with the parents in the 1900 census is 8 years old. The parents are now both 68 years old which would have made the mother 60 when this child was born. This seems to imply the child is a grandchild. But which of the two missing earlier children (who I presume to be dead) or even the two existing children (the grandchild is visiting the grandparents) is the parent(s) of the 8 year old?

 

My question is how to handle this situation. I hate to arbitrarily pick one of the parents and assign them as the parent. Even making them non-primary doesn't seem right. I could list all four of the earlier children as the parent(s) of the grandchild with a cautionary not but that seems a bit of overkill.

 

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

Mike

 

What I did was to give the grandparents another child using the given names of the other children (Joe-mary-robert-ernst-polly) and then made that person the parent of the "grandchild".

 

Granted- it looks strange but with a note in the memo it pretty well makes things clear.

[Michael Hannah 0]

I would also add a new person of unknown sex as the grandchild's parent with some appropriate name. Alternatively you could arbitrarily pick what you believe to be the best candidate parent but add an explanatory memo. I have added a set of custom relationship tags with the suffix "-Can" to indicate more clearly to myself in detail view that a relationship is only a candidate for the "correct/true" relationship and to remind me to make use of the memo. Since relationship tags have no sentences, a variety of custom tag types have been proposed for the “Other” group to produce sentences to narrate various relationship complications. You may simply want to create a custom tag, possibly named "UnknownParent", with the grandchild as the Principal and the various possible parents as Witnesses each with their own sentence and memo recording your reasoning of why or why not this could be the parent. In my opinion the primary factors to consider are: 1) be sure to record what you know and conclude, and 2) record it in whatever way will cause the reports that you use to say what you want the way that you want. It really is up to you.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,

[Guest Michael Dietz]

Thank you Roy and Mike. Good ideas giving me stuff to think and work with.

 

Mike

[Michael Hannah 0]

You are most welcome Mike, glad to help.