Never married as a spouse?
As I was updated a family line, I ran across , for several different individuals, never married as the spouse. Should I leave it or take it out? Examples: John Nykamp
Male, 4 April 1897 – 16 March 1926, LNX1-8FW
William Nykamp, Male, 31 March 1895 – 12 February 1919, 9XJB-9LC
Any suggestions? What is right?
Best Answer
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This looks like someone's use of a personal style in a universal tree. That usually doesn't work all that well.
I would vote to remove the non-existent person/note of explanation and add under the Other Information section the Fact: No Couple Relationships.
To keep the database in cleaner shape, I would be inclined to remove the non-spouse, change the gender to match the real person, then merge the non-spouse into the real person rather than have a bunch of empty records floating around.
I'm sure you will get other opinions that you will have to consider then make a decision.
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Thank you. Anybody else have an opinion?
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@CarpenterDaniel , I certainly agree with @Gordon Collett 's suggestion to remove that "spouse" called "Never Married" -- each person in Family Tree should be a person who actually existed, and this "person" never existed.
If you simply remove the couple relationship to that pseudo-person, then the person will still be in Family Tree, disconnected from any family. That person record serves no purpose. That record can't simply be deleted (since more than one person has contributed to them), so the only way available to you to remove them from the Tree is a merge. Gordon gave good advice as to how to do that, if you want to go to the extra work to keep the Tree tidy.
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Refer to the FS help article on the subject of how to enter names in the Family Tree:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-to-enter-names-in-family-tree
Quoting from that article: "Avoid words that are not names. Examples include not named, unnamed, Mister, Wife, twin, or son."
Note that under the "Other Information" tab there is an option to enter "No couple relationships" in the "Facts" section.
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Thank you everybody for your suggestions. I took out the "Never Married" as a spouse.
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