Community Chat

[Yardlie]

Families are very complex these days. Many people have multiples ex's. I have one sister who married three different men and had at least one child by each of them. I use a lot of the different sites for research, but have my trees displayed mostly at Ancestry.com. It looks ridiulous to have one person married to three different people. I have my sister in the middle, a spouse on either side of her, and the third spouse connected to her second spouse. Their own children are all attached to the right people...accept for the one who is attached to two men. Family life is not so simple anymore, and I don't think it is going to get any easier with same sex marriages and transgenders. How do you show that "Robert" is now "Roberta?" There needs to be some sort of documentation for future generations who might wonder if "Robert" died or whatever....and where did "Roberta" come from?

I'm not judging these people. It is just the way of the world. Lord knows, we have had plenty of these ordeals in our close families.

I'm loving Genealogy...just confused about how to handle some of these delicate situations. Also, is there any reason to indicate ex-spouses if there were no children? Thanks for any insight you care to share! 

[blackhole99]

I have no advice for you, but you sure do have your work cut out for you. Good luck.

[ALRATIBA]

I use Family Tree Maker .... just add another spouse and children.   It interfaces with Ancestry and the chart online shows the spouses and the children under the appropriate spouse.

The printout descendant chart shows Spouse 1 and children, Spouse 2 and children ... etc.

It's not just "these days."   I have instance where the wife died and husband remarried and had more children ... back into the 1500s!  

[Scooby Doo]

It's not a new issue.  LDS genealogists have been dealing with this for a long time.

There's polygamists that go back several generations with multiple wives and children.

I'm trying to remember how my grandmother listed them.  I think each husband had a separate page for each wife and children.

You might find instructions on line.  Google geneology instructions at lds.org  There's a whole website dedicated to geneology.

[Yardlie]

Thanks, everyone! I'll have to go through some more of those tutorials on the genealogy sites.

I know that some of these things have been going on for years. I traced one family line back to 1450 and found one case where one woman married two  brothers all in good time. She had a son with one and a daughter with the other. Those two (half-siblings) eventually married.  I've also seen many instances of first cousins marrying years ago.