Invisible Wives

[Old Gent 0]

I was recently caught out by the tendency of families to repeat the same given names from generation to generation. In my case the names Joseph and Francis seem to occur in each generation, with one being the father in a particular generation and the other being the first son, with this alternating in the next generation, usually with the father's name been given to a the second son. I'm sure we've all had the situation. However in my case this caught me out when trying to add some newly found census data to TMG7.

 

I managed to add some children's names to one person, thinking that he was the father, but mistakenly had added them to the record of the person who was actually one of the children in question, whose details I already had in the database, if you follow what I mean. I had added a second son, Francis, and his siblings, to what I thought was his father, Joseph, when in fact I had added him and his siblings to his elder brother Joseph. Somewhat incestuously and totally incorrectly.

 

I soon realised what I had done and tried to undo it by removing the wrongly entered people, and then re-entering them in the correct generation. All seemed OK until I looked deeper. I now find that the two people I had confused are shown as having 2 wives each, instead of 1 each, with the second wife's entry (in the Family view) being totally blank, but the "Next" spouse button showing 1 of 2, 2 of 2 as you select it. By being totally blank I mean just that, there is no name shown in the "Spouse" box, and importantly no reference number etc. This applies to both the father and the son whom I confused. What it also show is that the original son that I had in the database before starting this addition is now shown as having a blank mother, whilst all his siblings have their correct mother listed. This also shows in ancestor/decendant reports where the two men are both shown with two wives with one of the spouses "boxes" being totally empty.

 

It seems to me that, when I did the incorrect entry at the start, TMG created some form of husband-wife link which wasn't removed when I deleted the incorrect entries. I have carried out all the operations in the "Maintenance" entry in the menu, and all ran perfectly, not finding any errors, but still leaving the "Invisible" wifes. Not having any reference numbers, or any form of first or given names means that I cannot track down the entries in the database to deal with them.

 

Any suggestions as to (1) why has this happened (2) what did I do wrong and (3) how do I rectify the situation.

 

All suggestions greatfully accepted

Edited September 16, 2008 by Old Gent

[Terry Reigel 0]

The problem is not some sort of "invisible" marriage, but rather one that is implied because there are children who are not connected to the visible wife. Since TMG says you "told it" they are not the children of that wife, they must be the children of some other mother who you have not entered - the one you see as blank in the Family view.

 

The solution is to look at the Person view of each of the children of the fathers, and notice who their mother is. For those that don't have a mother displayed, connect them to their mother by opening the "mother" tag at the top of their person views and entering the ID# of the mother.

[Old Gent 0]

Thanks for the reply Terry. I see what you mean and you are most likely correct, as that is what is shown on the reports.

 

However when I try to do what you suggest, i.e.

 

Snip................................

The solution is to look at the Person view of each of the children of the fathers, and notice who their mother is. For those that don't have a mother displayed, connect them to their mother by opening the "mother" tag at the top of their person views and entering the ID# of the mother.

I see the standard "add" dialogue box, but if I try to overwrite the offerred reference number by inserting the number of the "Real" mother I get a message saying that "this number is already in use, use F2 to see unused numbers" and I cannot get any further. I have actually tried it in both directions, i.e add a mother to a son and add a son to a mother. In both cases I hit the "number in use" message and barrier.

 

I cannot see any other method of adding a Mother. I thought that there was a "link two persons option" but perhaps that was in some other program.

 

Do you know of another way of adding a mother that already exists in the tree, or a way of overiding the "number in use" message?

[Old Gent 0]

(Update) I think that I have found a way around my problem. I created duplicate or "Dummy" copies of the motherless children for each of the mothers by entering basic names only, and then "merged" the new enties with the existing (correct) entries, ensuring that the new children (with their mothers) were merged into the existing data.

 

This seems to have worked fine. Thanks to Terry for putting me onto the correct track.

 

[Edited for Typos]

Edited September 16, 2008 by Old Gent

[Terry Reigel 0]

You're welcome. Very clever, but you made that way harder than it needs to be.

 

As I tried to say above, go to the child's person view. Double-click on the "Mother" label below the child's name to open the Mother/Child relationship tag. Enter the mother's ID# and close the tag. The child is now connected to the mother.

 

This works for connecting parents and children, and similarly you add a Marriage Tag to create a Marriage for two people already present in your data set. Instead of opening the parent/child tag as I described, you can also click the + button or use the menus to open the Tag Type List, select the necessary Tag Type, click the Select button, and add the tag that way.

 

This is all part of the "everything is a Tag" nature of TMG's data structure. For more on that, see the "TMG Basic Concepts" article on my website or Chapter 1 of my book (links to both below).

 

The "Add Person" function, as you learned, is intended to add a new person to our data set, not to connect existing people. It "adds" a person by assigning an ID# and allowing you to enter a name. But it does more - adds Birth and Death tags if you enter information for them, but more to the point here, it adds Parent/Child Tags or Marriage Tags if said the new person is related to an existing one. It is that Parent/Child tag that you added by a round-about way by adding a new child and then merging that child with the existing one.

[Old Gent 0]

................ but you made that way harder than it needs to be.

 

Yes, of course, you are right. I had completely forgotten about entering relations in the way you mentioned, I'm so used to using the Add a Person Button, and as it's some time since I needed to alter something in this way I had a mental block; put it down to age.

 

Anyway thanks again