Genealogy Chat

Can anyone tell me please, how can I link one person to different branches? My cousin on my mothers side married a lady who is descended from my fathers side. I entered her details on both branchs thinking that the system would ask me if this was the same person and so link automatically, but it didn't.

The Genes tree is very basic and does not provide for this.
The only way is to have one of the people in the tree twice and explain in the notes.
However you can get over it.
You can build your tree somewhere else and import it to Genes with a Gedcom.

This is scenario is quite common and care has to be taken not to produce what is known as duplicate descendants. This is where the same son or daughter is shown descending twice, one from the fathers line and once from the mothers line.

The problem with the GR tree is that t is only two dimensional and what you have is a multi-dimensional relationship. This is no problem for a home computer based family tree program. Ancestry trees can also handle these relationships as well.

The best way to deal with this on the GR tree is to show the husband and wife twice. Show the female against the husband as his wife but as if she had no parents. Make a note against the wife that she is the same person as XXXXX shown elsewhere in this tree. Against the female where she descends from her parents in your tree add the husband but again without his parents. Again make a note against his details showing that this is the same person as XXXX shown elsewhere in the tree.

Any children from this marriage should be shown as descending from the husbands main line.

This is not a perfect solution but is the best you can achieve in a two dimensional tree.

Michael

Nudged up for Justin.