> 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. My 2 cents, Lisa llepore@comcast.net