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Archiver > TMG > 2004-07 > 1089018173


From: Tim Powys-Lybbe <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Spouses even though no marriage shown?
Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2004 10:02:53 +0100
References: <485ea3c84c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk> <8806b8c84c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk> <5a5dc4c84c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk> <07c333c94c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk> <6.1.0.6.2.20040704124705.02eb8cb0@popd.ix.netcom.com> <9d2f70c94c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk> <6.1.0.6.2.20040704162916.02ebbce0@popd.ix.netcom.com>
In-Reply-To: <6.1.0.6.2.20040704162916.02ebbce0@popd.ix.netcom.com>


In message of 5 Jul, Dennis Lee Bieber <> wrote:

> On or about 07/04/04 16:01 a carrier pigeon from Tim Powys-Lybbe delivered:
>
> >In fact I thing the last criterion is wrong as it gives the wrong thing
> >in TMG. An unmarried couple are living together. They cohabit. They
> >have children (which is usually why you enter them into your genealogy
> >system).
>
> If they have children, then -- to my way of thinking -- the
> linkage between them is via the children.

Not entirely. You have to realie that what is entered into Generations
is a "couple", a pair of people who are an item, as they say these
days. This relationship may even have a starting time and a finishing
time. If we are doing Family History and not just old fashioned
Genealogy, we record whatever we know of the members of the family. A
period of time cohabiting is significant and might well be worth
recording.

Similarly of my gt-grandfather I record that he was mayor of a small
town in the 1880s. And that he almost certainly cohabited with his wife
before marriage.

> >So the way this works in Generations means that the event to be created
> >in TMG should be in the marriage group, but this particular tag (I do
> >hope I have the right word) should be called Unmarried. If you do this
> >then the people appear as "spouses" ("lovers"?) in the Family and Tree
> >displays in Generations. With the present importing procedures they do
> >not appear together in the trees at all, which is wrong for how they
> >appear in Generations.
>
> I would expect them to show up in an ancestor tree rooted on a
> child, as the parents of that child. Are you saying they don't?

No. But it does not show up if they don't have children. Whereas in
Generations a cohabiting couple (who are unmarried) can be made to show
up whether or not they have children.

> I have no idea how I'd ever handle a status of "unmarried" except
> by the total absence of a marriage event. After all, you can't date it ("Mr
> X and Ms Y were unmarried in some place on a date" ???; that sounds more
> like some strange phrasing for an annulment or divorce). What happens if
> down the road you find some sleepy backwoods record of a marriage. Under
> normal TMG operations, you'd now enter a marriage event with a source. If
> your "unmarried" event existed, would you remember to remove it? TMG sure
> isn't going to remove it, though it may offer to change "primacy" to the
> new marriage. Now you get a report that reads "Mr. X and Ms Y were
> unmarried. ... Mr. X and Ms Y were married at sleepy backwoods on
> hypothetical date".

Why do you have to have a marriage event? The principle of TMG is
eloquently stated in the Manual's Introduction, p. 24:

'It will adapt to the personal preferences of each user ... In
particular, it should not dictate the type or quantity of data that
"should be" or "need not be" recorded for each person.'

What I have established is that a tag can be created in TMG's marriage
group with the name, perhaps, of "Cohabiting". I did this, I entered no
further data, and was delighted to see the happy couple linked together
in the family and tree displays.

So you do not have to have Events of data and place in TMG. Just forget
about your previous paragraph, it is not what TMG is about! Cut
the follwing out and stick it on a noticeboard above your monitor:

______________________
| |
| TMG will adapt |
|______________________|


> > A similar thing should be done for the Common Law tag. This is more
>
> Now this one I'll agree with... something like a "marr-comm" (or
> "marr-claw"? <G>) should be created -- since common law marriage has a
> legal definition, and one could find/cite evidence to support such a state.
> But "Unmarried"? There is a saying: "You can't prove a negative" -- there
> is no way one can ever prove that a couple were not married, all one can
> state is that one has not found evidence to the contrary (I'd even consider
> a death-bed confession to be no more than hearsay, and as valid as a
> death-bed claim of a secret marriage).

You are no implying the "Unmarried" means "never cohabitied". Unmarried
is the status of a couple, not of a single person. What is meant is
that the couple were living as husband and wife but not married,
"cohabiting" as we can also call it.

> >program means. But Wholly-Genes decided to offer this excellent import
> >facility which certainly persuaded me to buy a copy of TMG. Already
> >two TMG problems on handling Generations files have been fixed since I
> >bought my copy of TMG. My hope is that this one will be fixed too.
> >
> >One interesting fact with the Generations files is that they are
> >totally exchangeable with Reunion files for the Apple mac. (I have done
> >this successfully in the past.) Leister Productions who own the Reunion
> >program might be more willing to assist Wholly Genes than the current
> >lack of a clear developer of Generations.
>
> I'm sure WG would be happy to have someone define all the "rules"
> Generations uses to interpret its data, rather than having to go from
> internal reverse engineering of the raw data files <G>

The point that we all recognise is that the import has worked fairly
well. I know that two changes have been made since January so it is not
cast in blocks of stone.

As a methodology I am quite happy with this. There will be a few
'gotchas', but if the users are happy to find these out and to report
them and Wholly-Genes then to deal with them, who is complaining? I
certainly am not.

Talking of which I suspect I ought now to get round to making a report
to TMG support.

> Though I'm pretty sure they won't create an "Unmarried" marriage
> event type, for the reasons I indicate above

Think out of the box! TMG does not require you to enter all details for
an event. All you have to do is enter the names of the two principals.
I am quite happy to do this for pairs of cohabiting people, why should
not you be?

All that TMG needs to create is a tag in the marriage group with the
tag name of "Unmarried" or "Cohabiting". It works fine when done by
hand. It can work just as fine when importing from Generations. It
reflacts the relationships that are recorded in Generations and which
undoubtedly exist in the Real World.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe
For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org

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