Please add to the marriage data entry forms

LegacyUser

Briana Pugmire said: On the records for US marriages, I've seen that the marriage information data entry fields are more limited. There is no place for any entries for the groom's or bride's parents, nor anyone's birthplace. Several records I have indexed have had that information, but I couldn't put it in. Could that be changed please?

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Welcome to the community-powered public feedback forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.

At lot depends upon how you are adding people to your family.

For instance, if you are using the source linker (which adds a source to individuals' records), you may add people in the process, but these are the marriage details that you are entering, not details about a person's life.

For the bride or groom's parents, the most that is added is the source, with no details about any of the parents. Perhaps at some future date, the feature may be available that will add all the details that has been indexed in the record, but for now, that feature is no present.

If you are manually adding the couple, then you are not working with each individual's family members. You are working only with the couple.

The tree is a massive tree for all mankind, with over 1.2 Billion names in it (I've seen reports for as many as 1.4 Billion, but nothing official -- I haven't looked, either). It is designed to have just one record for each person who has lived and for which there are records.

You may not be familiar with all of the aspects of the tree, so I recommend that you use or refer to The Family History Guide (http://thefhguide.com/), which is an approved (by FamilySearch) training guide to help people enter information into the massive tree.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Tom

I believe Briana is talking about working on indexing projects involving marriages. Many of the sources I attach have the names of the fathers of both bride and groom included. The opportunity to index these names appears no longer available, using the current forms. It does seem a shame if FamilySearch is thereby now limiting the indexing of such useful information.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I should have looked at the "Product". I believe you are correct... My mistake.

LegacyUser

Juli said: The fields included in indexing depend on the specific project. I can think of several reasons to skip the parents on marriage records: perhaps the majority of the images do not include that information, or maybe they wanted to speed up the indexing by including only the names of the bride and groom.

Keep in mind that an index is merely a finding aid, not a transcription.