entering women's names in vitals section

NormanJosephSmith50

Hi

I hope this finds you and those close to you in good health and peace of mind.

I have read the article: How to enter names in Family Tree • FamilySearch

My experience in searching has very often proven that (temporarily) using a married name in the vitals section, provides more matches to sources than a blank surname, which is encouraged in the article when the maiden name is unknown.

I'd like to suggest changing the article to incorporate this.

When I use a married name in the vitals section for women, before knowing her maiden name, I often get matches of christening documents, where the woman's married name was used with, or even without, her husband's name, i.e. the parents might be listed as John Smith and Mary Smith, or sometimes just Mary Smith.

As I add the older and older child, I change the suspected marriage date and place, and the parents' suspected birth year, based on the child's birth year -21y and place of birth. When no more suggestions are made for suspected children and I change the suspected marriage date and place based on the oldest child, with the mother having her married name in vitals, I very often get a match of suggested marriages, which usually have the wife's/mother's maiden name, which I then change in vitals. Then I usually find her family using similar methods.

Please consider adding this (temporary) use of married name in a woman's vitals.

Best wishes

Joe

Gordon Collett

The search routines look at more that just the main name for a person, so do be sure to enter a woman's married name, but put it where it belongs, under Other Information as an Alternate Name and mark it properly as a married name:

If you use the auto-populating searches in the right column of a person's page, these alternate names are automatically filled in, such as when I use the FamilySearch link:

Doing this should give the same results as the technique you are doing.

For clarity and consistency, we should stick with the generally accepted practice of only putting a woman's maiden name in the Vitals section.

Paul W

The problem with the two names being carried across from the person page (after clicking on the FamilySearch logo) is that they get treated in the same way, so even though you add Edith Stevens as a Married Name, the search results will still include Edith Stevens christenings - at a time when she would have been known as Edith Jacks, of course.

I don't find it too much trouble to carry out (at least) two searches: one (in this example) based on Edith Jacks (for events in the years from her birth to marriage), then a separate search on Edith Stevens, for post-marriage events. I find having those Alternate Names carried across doesn't really help, because searches are generally more productive if one or two of the vitals (at a time) are removed and searches made for just one type of record at a time (birth, marriage, death, census, immigration, etc.)

See https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&offset=20&q.birthLikeDate.from=1807&q.birthLikeDate.to=1811&q.birthLikePlace=Essex%2C%20England%2C%20United%20Kingdom&q.birthLikePlace.exact=on&q.givenName=Sarah&q.givenName.1=Sarah&q.surname=Potter&q.surname.1=Clements&treeref=MFDX-DSW, which illustrates the need to make several searches (in both names) for a better return of relevant results.