How to enter wife's name

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Permalink Reply by Lewis Hartswick on January 19, 2011 at 5:19pm

I leave it blank (hopefully to be added later) . Do the same for a husband that marries one of my line that I don't have one

of his names, sometimes it's the given sometimes it's his surname.

   ...lew...

Permalink Reply by Dede Holden on January 20, 2011 at 5:01am

I put the husband's last name using double brackets.  This gives me at least a clue of the family relationship when I'm looking at a name list. 

Likewise, if I don't know a first name.  For instance, if a daughter, Jane Doe Smith, is widowed and has moved back in with her parents in a census listing, you will know her married name, but not her husband's first name.  So I will name him [[Husband of Jane Doe]] Smith. 

 

The advantage of this is that you can exclude this information from reports very easily.

Permalink Reply by Sarah Coles on January 20, 2011 at 12:21pm

I find that anything other than a blank entry will give you issues with genealogical software.  Some people put in "unknown" but that gets you an error message.  I'd just leave it blank until you hopefully find a a surname.  At least that's how I handle the situation but others may do it differently.  I might use the "notes" field to specify the fact that the person is unknown but was the wife of so and so.

Permalink Reply by Don Edwards on January 22, 2011 at 11:40am

For unknown names I put "Firstname" or "Lastname" (without the quotation marks) as it applies.  Works for me!