LB7J-X2J The person shows his stepfather as a relationship
Samuel's mother, Minerva Flaningam, KD9Z-G5S, had two husbands. He was born to her first husband, Samuel Patrick, MGT4-JM7. When going to his mother's person page he is listed under both husbands. When he is "repeated" under the 2nd father, George Sornberger, KJGK-HJ1 - it has stepfather as his relationship to him. It becomes confusing when going to Samuel Patrick's person page - it shows him with both his father and stepfather. - two fathers - a quick look and the relationship gets overlooked.
It's possible this might be used when records specify that such a relationship exists. Census records are the most common. They are also the ones that have errors showing all persons in their household have the same last name - even when they don't. Or showing incorrect relationships - saying daughter instead of stepdaughter.
So with Samuel, since he's shown directly above already as the son of the 1st husband - Do we need to do that? or is it redundant? I especially need to know as I am a Temple and Family History Consultant and want to make sure what's the correct way.
Best Answer
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The correct way is what his relatives that are users of Family Tree decide is the correct way. Family Tree provides many options for us users as to how we wish to display our family information.
Do we need to show all child-parent relationships? Not necessarily. But the program allows us to. There can be as many sets of parents on a person's page as needed to fully explain and document his life. He could have biological, step, foster, and adoptive parents in any number of configurations. Will you ever see in Family Tree a person with six sets of these various types of parents? I hope not. Anyone with that many had a very rough life. But in the right situations should it be done to accurately display someone's history? Of course!
Redundant? Not at all. No part of someone's life history could be considered redundant.
As far as that "quick look" confusing people. Please teach the people you help to slow down, look at and study all the information in Family Tree, and really learn about their families.
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Thanks for taking the time to reply. I learned a lot.
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GardnerBetteAnn1 To piggyback on the excellent explanation that Gordon Collett gave you, I have an example of how non-biological relationships can be useful. There are a couple of ancestors in my husband's family whose childhood lives are a mystery and the individuals went to their graves without fully revealing what happened. Those alive today are very curious about any new information I can find. These non-biological relationships come in very handy to track bits of information. You can see from my attached image I have been able to prove my 13 year old relative's whereabouts for a period in 1930, thanks to the 1930 Census. This 13 year-old is listed as a "lodger" in a family completely unrelated to him and it took me some digging to connect the dots. (And as can be expected, the connected dots only lead to more questions. LOL but that is off topic for this post.)
There is a new feature currently in Beta which will allow you to establish connections between two people that are even more different. It's called "Other Relationship" and the choices are apprentice, employment, Godparent, household, neighbor, relative, and slavery. My example above kind of sits on the fence between the two links. A typical lodger would be connected to the family as Other Relationship, "household", providing that is useful information for another purpose. However, given that this "lodger" is a child, I'm probably going to keep the relationship as guardianship. I love the flexibility we have had and the additional are getting.
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I just got to read this all the way through. I'm excited to see the Beta you talked about. And my daughter and I are working on an ancestor that had 4 husbands, some children with some, and Census records get them all scrambled around. I'm glad I asked about all of this. Thank you for taking the time to teach me more.
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