How to add an out of wedlock child to an existing Tree?
The Record of Birth in 1914 for my mother listed her father who had not married her mother. She was given her MOTHER's maiden name. My mother did not know of her biological father all her life until my DNA research revealed his name and his Tree.
How and should she be listed within his Family Tree: ? a relative ? or child ? She was given her mother's maiden name on the Birth record, and the 1920 Census showed her as ADOPTED later when her mother married someone else. And therefore she was given her adoptive name.
As her son I never knew who her blood father was until now! And he was my grandfather who died before I was born. I feel she should be recorded in her father's Tree but what is the process/category?
ALSO: her father later married someone else and had 2 children who may not have known of the earlier birth. But she existed as a "stepdaughter" even though not given his surname.
Thanks so much for guidance!
Answers
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You can add her biological father, unconnected to her mother, by using the "Add Parent" button at the bottom of the Parents and Siblings column of the Family Members section. You can also add her adoptive father as her mother's spouse, then mark the relationship as adoptive by clicking the edit (pencil) button to the right of her name where she appears under her adoptive father.
Then, on bio-dad's page, you can use the "add" buttons in the left-hand (Spouses and Children) column to add his wife and other children.
This will capture all of the relationships that existed. Unfortunately, the half-siblings will only be visible from bio-dad's page, not from the illegitimate child's page, but if she never even knew her father, then I wouldn't put in any sort of relationship with his wife, because there wasn't one.
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The other half of this discussion is whether you should enter any of this in Family Tree at this point. Are her two half siblings still alive? Do they have children? Although the chance may be low, is stumbling across an unknown other half of the family in an online tree really the way they should learn of this? To some families this may be greeted with a shrug. To others it could be devastating news. These are some issues you should think seriously about.
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One other option to be aware of (although the one @Julia Szent-Györgyi recomended is probably better in this case...)
You can add a Couple Relationship Event of "Lived Together".
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I have an adopted relative whose bio parents never married each other. They married other people later on. I use the method Julia Szent-Györgyi describes to set up 3 sets of parents for this relative: Adoptive parents, birth mom and spouse, birth dad and spouse. I really like the display when this is set up. It is extremely clear at just a glance.
I have minimal living people but both my relative and her sons are interested in their blood lineage and so the living birth mom is attached and her line extends from there. She is extremely old and likely will not last long. Birth dad and both adoptive parents are deceased. All lines have been extensively worked on by me and others in FamilySearch. I am actually collaborating with the husband of one of the paternal half sisters with the sisters' shared father's line. Of all my family history collaborators, he has the most convoluted relationship to me to still be called "family." I think it's great.
Edit: davidleelambert. "Lived together" is a good addition, but there is still nothing to indicate a child born out of wedlock from either a consensual or non-consensual event. In these cases, we simply do not add an event at all. Am I correct?
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