> > > 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 > > Thank you for the responses to my question. This answers my question in > the since there is no standard answer. > > As the database gains more families, I was trying to avoid several Marys > in the index that are not traceable to a family. Same problem if I > identify Mary as Mary Unknown. > > I like the idea of tying in the family to the unknown an as in the > example above of Mary motherofJimjones. Maybe I will try Mary > JonemotherofJim, as that would tie Mary to the Jones family > specifically Jim. > > I have found incidences where two unrelated people with the same last > name have married. It keeps genealogy interesting. > > Keith Nuttle <keith_nuttle@sbcglobal.net> My 2c worth. I use Legacy to record my information. In Legacy the use of [[ ]] around an entry marks it as private, meaning that you can see it all the time but it doesn't print or export to web pages. I use it to indicate who the "Mary" unknown is married to eg; Mary [[JONES]]. Legacy allows you to easily see which jones and it lowers the incidence of identical unknowns. It works well for me and I don't have non-standard formats exporting for people to "snipe" at. -- Gene Y. n2kvs Researching Young, Zies, Harer & Cox with Legacy Family Tree http://h1.ripway.com/egptech/ "Gene Y." <n2kvs@cfl.rr.com>