> > I have several situations where a person listed as a mother in law > > is living with her son. > > i.e. > > Jim Jones B 1803; > > Mary Jones B:1780 mother-in-law. > > > > Since her maiden name probably is not Jones, What name do you > > enter as the name of her husband? > > > > Keith Nuttle <keith_nuttle@sbcglobal.net> > > We've had this discussion may times - > what name to use for someone whose > last name is unknown. > > I use Unknown. > > We are told that the accepted practice for a > person with no last name is to enter it as > [--?--] or something similar. Apparently, some > genealogy programs will do this automatically > when a last name is missing. > > People do all kinds of things to identify the person > as being part of Jim Jones' family like > Mary [Motherinlaw of Jim Jones] > > If you only have one Jim Jones, this might work for > you, but I have not found that to be much of an improvement, > since I have many people of the same name in my tree, so > it doesn't help me much. > > The simplest way is to give her the last name of unknown. > That way, you know you have to find her name, and you > also know that you didn't omit her name by accident when > you were entering your data. > > Lisa <llepore@comcast.net > I would use Mary JONES* to indicate that Jones probably is not her maiden name. My genealogy program would then sort it at the end of the JONESes.