I agree that spouses should not have combined files (unless, they happen to be first cousins). However there are other reasons to divide PAF files. I decided to divide my files by grandparents, which gives me four PAF files: Seavey, Clark, Christensen and Dean. There is very little overlap in these family lines (but there is some on the Seavey and Clark lines which are both in New England, but didn't get together until about 1850 in Utah). I find that it is convenient to have them separate. I made a BIG mistake when I decided to divide my UTAH SEVEY file (which had about 2000 names) from my Large SEAVEY file which has 28,000 names. After seeing the problems of dividing the files, I recombined them and had a fair amount of trouble getting rid of duplicates. Using PAF Insight helped me get rid of many duplicates because of the hidden identifier number in PAF, but a lot I had to do with Match & Merge. I think I finally have done it, but it took a lot of time. Tom Sevy in Taylorsville, Utah.

Hi Tom, While the difficulty of spouses working on a combined file is a challenge, it is not nearly as difficult as the challenge that your children will have when they want to combine your file with your spouse's file and will have to deal with all the duplicates from crossed lines. The only way I can imagine that it would work is if you agree to not trace your separate lines back beyond a certain limit. My wife and I have so many lines that cross back in England that it would be a huge deterrent for my children to ever want to continue with the research if they had to combine them. Richard Rands At 10:11 AM 7/7/2005 -0600, Tom Sevy wrote: >I agree that spouses should not have combined files (unless, they happen >to be first cousins). However there are other reasons to divide PAF >files. I decided to divide my files by grandparents, which gives me four >PAF files: Seavey, Clark, Christensen and Dean. There is very little >overlap in these family lines (but there is some on the Seavey and Clark >lines which are both in New England, but didn't get together until about >1850 in Utah). I find that it is convenient to have them separate. > >I made a BIG mistake when I decided to divide my UTAH SEVEY file (which >had about 2000 names) from my Large SEAVEY file which has 28,000 names. >After seeing the problems of dividing the files, I recombined them and had >a fair amount of trouble getting rid of duplicates. Using PAF Insight >helped me get rid of many duplicates because of the hidden identifier >number in PAF, but a lot I had to do with Match & Merge. I think I >finally have done it, but it took a lot of time. > >Tom Sevy in Taylorsville, Utah. > > >==== PAF-5-USERS Mailing List ==== >PAF-5-USERS Mailing List >http://www.ausbdm.org/p5uindex.php