descendancy view

dboyter

My uncles has been married twice. he has children from two wives that are showing but he has stepchildren from one. I would like to be able to see them as well.

Alan E. Brown

Family Tree shows all the parent-child relationships that actually exist in the Tree. So if those step children are listed as his children (with the relationship type set to "Step") then they will appear with their step siblings.

One should be judicious in the use of step-relationships. My personal opinion is that it's entirely appropriate to add step-relationships if a step-child actually lived in the household with the step-parents. If not, I would be wary.

Here's an example of how it might look from the wife's perspective. Even though the step-daughter Jennifer Davis is not John's biological daughter, she has a step relationship to John, and so she appears as one of his children with her mother Jane, with the relationship type "Step".

Paul W

Alan makes an interesting point - effectively, when is a stepchild not a stepchild?

I recently came across a widowed man whose second wife was much younger than him, so the youngest of his children (by the first wife) were of an age that they could have been born to her, but the eldest were born when she was a child.

All were living in the same household, but the eldest hardly needed "mothering" at their age. So, I was puzzled as to whether I should add all, some, or none of these children in a "step" relationship to the second wife!

Gail Swihart Watson

Another answer to the question "when is a stepchild not a stepchild?" Two situations:

1) I have an adopted relative whose birth lineage I am working on. Birth mom and dad never married each other. They each married other people and each couple had children who are all half siblings to my adopted relative. I have 3 sets of parents for this adopted relative, adopted parents, birth mom and her spouse, and birth dad and his spouse. I want to show the spouses because I want to show the birth parents' lineages. Also, as it turns out, this is a very endogamous community and birth mom's spouse is ALSO a relative of my adopted relative, so that set of half siblings are actually more like 3/4 siblings, and I REALLY want to see HIS lineage.

In searching for an appropriate relationship type to establish between my adopted relative and the spouses of the birth parents, I found nothing better than "step" and I didn't like that because I feel, like Alan E. Brown, that the step relationship shouldn't be used unless child and step parent lived in the same household. In my adopted relative's case, they did not, but I don't know what other relationship to use. I wish we could just establish a relationship between a child and a woman called "spouse of father" or child and man called "spouse of mother".

2) My great grandfather's wife, Celia, died when most of her grandchildren were small. This would have been my father, his siblings and many cousins. Great grandfather remarried quickly to Martha. Now all of Martha's step children were adults when she married into the family, so in theory there is no reason to add a step relationship there, EXCEPT, Martha stepped up and was a huge part of her step grandchildren's lives. I have a thousand photos of her, I have heard about, as well as tasted, her famous fried chicken, and I myself have memories of her loud booming voice and massive hugging arms welcoming me as a small (and later on not so small) child for a visit. So, for the sake of the grand and great grandchildren, she was a part of the family and I have added a step relationship between her and my grandfather, once again, violating the Alan E. Brown rule that I believe in. I want her to be seen with my father and grandfather's family even though they never lived in the same house with her.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

My husband and his siblings never lived with their stepbrothers (except during the occasional holiday visits when they all squashed into the house at the same time), since they were all adults by the time their parents married, but that doesn't make them any less stepsiblings, or their mother any less my stepmother-in-law.

Back to the descendancy chart question: as Alan says, the chart will show all relationships that have been entered.

In my example, the first three children (Károly, Ernő, and Ágost) are Rosina's sons by her first husband. The relationship to Vilmos is "adoptive", which can be seen in the relevant Family Members sections, but is not indicated in the descendancy chart.

If I do a descendancy for one of Rosina's ancestors instead of Vilmos, the three sons are listed twice, with still no indication of the type of relationship.

(Yes, Rosina and Vilmos were both Günther. Yes, it gets confusing as heck: they both had both a father and a grandfather named Paul Günther. No, none of them were the same Paul.)