Jane married three times and all three husbands have been duly recorded. Yet the Record Window continues to show her maiden name at all three marriages. How can I alter this to show her current surname at the two subsequent marriages? I have FH 4.1.3. Paddy Buckley

Paddy Maiden name always remains you do not change that. The record window has columns showing her husbands names. For three husbands to be shown you will need three spouses columns. The children, if any, will have the husbands surname Victor On 30/09/2011 11:12 AM, Paddy Buckley wrote: > Jane married three times and all three husbands have been duly recorded. Yet the Record Window continues to show her maiden name at all three marriages. How can I alter this to show her current surname at the two subsequent marriages? I have FH 4.1.3. > > Paddy Buckley > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

The short answer is you can't, Family Historian will show the first listed name for a person at all times. It's worth remembering that someone remarrying may or may not use their previous married names. So for example a Widow probably will, but a divorcee may revert to their maiden name at divorce or may not. On 30 September 2011 11:12, Paddy Buckley <paddy.buckley@lineone.net> wrote: > Jane married three times and all three husbands have been duly recorded. > Yet the Record Window continues to show her maiden name at all three > marriages. How can I alter this to show her current surname at the two > subsequent marriages? I have FH 4.1.3. > -- Jane. Jane Taubman | www.rjt.org.uk | www.taubman.org.uk |www.fhug.org.uk

<<snipped>> the Record Window continues to show her maiden name at all three marriages. How can I alter this to show her current surname at the two subsequent marriages? <<snipped>> First I have to take you literally and deal with the Record window - that's the Individuals tab when it says [Records] at the top. (Sorry for being pedantic but not everyone calls everything the same thing). The explanation for why FH does what it does is that there is only one Individual record on file for "Jane". She simply happens to have 3 marriages, which are stored on her Individual record as links to 3 family records. It's not a Names window, so there's only one line for "Jane" and the name shown there is the first one on file. In addition, since it shows one line for all of a person's data, there's no possible concept of "current" name. I thought there was an item on the Wish List at http://www.fhug.org.uk/cgi-bin/index.cgi but can't find it, so it may have never got beyond a mailing list discussion. But under that idea, as well as showing the line for the record, there would be extra lines in the Record Window for each alternative name, which would act as short-cuts to the "real" record. In the meantime, you might care to customise your Records window (right click column headings to customise) and add columns for the surname of the spouses - the pain here is that you'd need to add a separate column for the surname of Spouse(1), then Spouse(2), etc., however many you think you need. I don't know if you've recorded Alternate names for "Jane" - that would be another possibility but that also illustrates just how complex multiple names is - some people use Alternate-names (which cannot be dated in correct GEDCOM), and some just follow the family history default of allowing it to go by implication. I just checked one of my ancestors and FH carefully (and sensibly) avoids the issue by just referring to "Jane" in the narrative report after her birth event. Adrian B

Thank you Adrian. You have no need to be sorry for being pedantic. We should all be more precise. I was actually looking at the Focus window, not the Records window. I tried out your suggestion of adding extra spouse columns but that seemed to be a cumbersome solution; more so when it needed a fourth spouse column to deal with the birth of a child 4 years after the death of Jane's first husband and 2 years before her second marriage. Paddy Buckley ----- Original Message ----- From: "Adrian Bruce" <abruce@madasafish.com> To: <family-historian-users@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 12:08 PM Subject: Re: [FHU] Multiple spouses > <<snipped>> > the Record Window continues to show her maiden name at all three > marriages. > How can I alter this to show her current surname at the two subsequent > marriages? > <<snipped>> > > First I have to take you literally and deal with the Record window - > that's > the Individuals tab when it says [Records] at the top. (Sorry for being > pedantic but not everyone calls everything the same thing). The > explanation > for why FH does what it does is that there is only one Individual record > on > file for "Jane". She simply happens to have 3 marriages, which are stored > on > her Individual record as links to 3 family records. It's not a Names > window, > so there's only one line for "Jane" and the name shown there is the first > one on file. In addition, since it shows one line for all of a person's > data, there's no possible concept of "current" name. > > I thought there was an item on the Wish List at > http://www.fhug.org.uk/cgi-bin/index.cgi but can't find it, so it may have > never got beyond a mailing list discussion. But under that idea, as well > as > showing the line for the record, there would be extra lines in the Record > Window for each alternative name, which would act as short-cuts to the > "real" record. > > In the meantime, you might care to customise your Records window (right > click column headings to customise) and add columns for the surname of the > spouses - the pain here is that you'd need to add a separate column for > the > surname of Spouse(1), then Spouse(2), etc., however many you think you > need. > > I don't know if you've recorded Alternate names for "Jane" - that would be > another possibility but that also illustrates just how complex multiple > names is - some people use Alternate-names (which cannot be dated in > correct > GEDCOM), and some just follow the family history default of allowing it to > go by implication. I just checked one of my ancestors and FH carefully > (and > sensibly) avoids the issue by just referring to "Jane" in the narrative > report after her birth event. > > Adrian B > > >