I use FamilyTreeMaker and Ancestry. I’ve read Tamura Jones’ articles (and others) and accept that if you don’t know a name you should leave the field blank. So I’m quite happy to show no father, just the mother, for an illegitimate child. But I have two men in my tree who I know (from DNA and other sources) to be brothers, born in 1785 and 1792. The younger is my direct ancestor. But I haven’t found either of their parents. How do I indicate the sibling relationship without attaching both to an ‘unknown’ couple?
4 Answers
On Ancestry's online tree system, one option is to create Weblinks between the two profiles. The disadvantage of doing it this way is that Weblinks aren't synced with Family Tree Maker.
Another possibility, mentioned in the previous answer, is to link them by their surname if they have a common surname.
Crista Cowan has said in her Barefoot Genealogy videos that users can indicate unknown names by using five underscores. That won't disrupt Ancestry's hinting or search algorithms.
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1I’ve plenty of documentary evidence that they had the same surname (Mathews) and were brothers, and DNA evidence that backs that up. I can therefore assume with a fair degree of confidence that their father was a Mr Mathews, forename unknown. So I can add a common parent to my tree. And while best practice might be to leave his forename field blank, in practice it seems better to indicate that unknown forename by five underscores. Thanks for your thoughts. Commented Jul 13 at 14:47
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@RichardMathews I had meant to include the note about the five underscores but I had to abandon my edit mid-stream. Thanks for reminding me.– Jan Murphy ♦Commented Jul 13 at 20:59
My preference is to include both parents, leaving their names and all their other information blank. Or, if you are not sure they are full siblings, then just one parent.
That way, the relationship of the brothers is immediately apparent with no further explanation necessary, other than the inclusion of the sources that show they are brothers.
This will also allow Family Tree Maker and Ancestry to be able to calculate relationships between the two brothers' descendants.
I don't see any problems caused by doing this.
I think it will depend on whether you know the surname(s) of those two brothers.
If their surnames are the same, then I think it is fine to name their father using that surname.
If their surnames are different, then I think it is fine to name their father using those two surnames with perhaps a forward slash ("/") between them.
FamilySearch recommends that you leave the name blank if you do not know it. However, I personally that it's best to enter as much as you can about your ancestors. Make sure whatever you enter is valid. Characters syuch as ?, /, and \ are NOT valid.
FamilySearch has a lot of excellent help articles accessible by clicking the ? sign at top of FamilySearch screen. For example, "How do I enter names in Family Tree?" which lists the characters that you should not use.
It is better to enter an approximate date, rather than no date, just be sure you preface the date with the word "About" by selecting it in the drop down field rather than entering it (in order to standardize it). We usually use 25 years before the birth of the first child as the approximate birthdate for the husband and 20 years for the approximate birthdate of the wife. If you are unsure of the name, you can either the word "or" such as: Smyth OR Smith or you can put the alternate date in the "Alternate Name" field.
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As has been commented elsewhere, this "user" appears to be posting AI-generated content. Commented Aug 20 at 23:42