Which parent to make primary

[Michael Dietz 0]

How should I handle the following situation?

 

I have a direct ancestor who had three wives, two of which had the given name of Elizabeth. Sources are ambiguous as to which Elizabeth is the mother of one of the children who is my direct ancestor. They do not have the date of death of the first wife or the marriage date of the second and so the child born around that time has been assigned to one or the other of the mothers.

 

Where this is important is the assignment of the correct mother as the primary mother of the child. If I assign the wrong one then reports such as Ahnentafel, Ancestor Box Chart, etc. will not have my maternal ancestors from that point on.

 

This situation also happens when one of two brothers is my ancestor, the other is just an uncle. Or unrelated individuals with the same surname are given as the parent.

 

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

Mike

[John Cardinal 0]

Mike,

 

I think the key point is that you don't know who the mother is. I wouldn't assign either as primary.

[Michael Hannah 0]

Hi Mike,

 

I agree with John's assessment. You do not know which wife (or brother, or other person) is actually the parent. If you do assign one of them the Primary parent, then your chart (or ancestor or descendant list) looks as if you do know, when you don't. For narrative reports you can usually add sufficient text to your sentences to make your uncertainty clear. If you do assign a parent, you may want to post edit lists or do something similar for charts to show the options and/or uncertainty. I don't use TMG's charts much, but from Virginia's posts it seems that post editing them is not difficult. Some time ago I hand constructed a chart where I put in both possible parents with notation. But in my case that was not too bad as the two lines merged due to intermarriages.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,

[Virginia Blakelock 0]

 

As Michael suggested, the situation can be effectively displayed in a basic Ancestor chart, like the attached one-page overview chart - the numbers indicating the continuation of each wife's line on separate one-page charts.

 

Virginia