John, I was merely explaining to Dean the way I do it. Other than always recording a maiden name if you have it the rest is up to personal preference.
The only time you will see Mrs. in my file is if I don’t know the woman’s first name AND I don’t know the woman’s maiden name. (and I did explain this). If I ever have to resort to this then there will be an explanation in my notes. If I know absolutely nothing about the wife then she will simply be “unknown.” If she is listed as Mrs. Mary Smith I DO know her name. It is Mary and her surname is unknown. If John Doe marries “Mrs. Jacob Green” it is clear that I don’t know her given name or her maiden name but she at least has some sort of identifier. Michele Technical Support mich...@legacyfamilytree.com www.legacyfamilytree.com From: John B. Lisle [mailto:leg...@johnlisle.com] Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2015 11:55 AM To: legacyusergroup@LegacyUsers.com Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] Adding a wife to Legacy Michele, Of course, the primary name for a woman should be her maiden name. When you knowingly record her name as her surname as (one of) her married name and then publish your data, you forever create a confusion for other researchers as to who she is/was. When I see a genealogy and see John Smith married to Mary Smith, I need to know if Smith is her maiden name or not. Of course, such situations happen and when they do, I try very hard to document both of their parents so that I can show that they come from different Smith families. Further, one of my personal recording standards is that everyone has both a given name and a surname. And when I do not know what they are, use a limited set of words to clarify the person. For unknown surname, I always use [--?--]. I invented this 20 years ago and it or some variation is now becoming popular. Why? It is a string of data that can never be confused for a real surname. Someone once wrote a satirical article about the genealogy of the mysterious "Unk" family. :-) For unknown given names, I use Mister, Miss, Son, Daughter, Child. These names both clarify your knowledge of the individual but also document the gender of the person. To assure that Legacy's Potential problem alerts don't flare up, you can create an UnknownName.txt file to document what you use so Legacy will not alert you when you use them (See the help page on Potential Problem Alerts to learn how to construct that file and where to place it on your PC. Further, when a woman I document in my genealogy marries using a married name, I will document her previous husband(s). Besides providing a proof trail showing how she got that name from her maiden name, proving your assignment of her maiden name, it could also document where some children found in a household came from. If I wish to see married names, I just turn on married names in either name list or index view. john. At 08:26 AM 3/26/2015, Michele/Support wrote: Dean, If you know her maiden name then you will want to enter her under that.  You always use a woman’s maiden name. If you don’t know her maiden name (for example, you have a marriage record that shows John Doe married a Mrs. Jane White but you don’t know what her maiden name was) then I would enter her as just Jane with no surname and then I would put Mrs. Jane White as an AKA. If in the above example your guy married Mrs. Jacob Green and you have no idea what her first name is nor her maiden name this would be the one time I would enter her with her married name.  I would enter Mrs. Green with Mrs. in the title field.  I would leave off the Jacob. I would add Mrs. Jacob Green as an AKA and I would add a marriage to Jacob Green.  Another situation where you will see this frequently is in obituaries. Mrs. James Black might be listed as a surviving family member.  In this case most of the time I know who her parents are or a male. I would attach her to her parents with a blank given name (the surname will be filled in) and then enter Mrs. James Black as an AKA. I would also add a husband for her named James Black with the obit as my source. Michele Technical Support mich...@legacyfamilytree.com www.legacyfamilytree.com From: dgadam...@gmail.com [ mailto:dgadam...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 11:48 PM To: legacyusergroup@LegacyUsers.com Subject: [LegacyUG] Adding a wife to Legacy I am adding a second wife to a man in Legacy. She was a widow and used her first husband’s surname. Should I use her first married name or her maiden name in adding her as a new person? Dean Adams ________________________________________ No virus found in this message. 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