Genealogy Chat

Hi,
This is not a basic question. I don't just mean adding spouses, siblings or parents. Basically, this is the situation:

I am a descendant of John Clough, who, in 1635, sailed from Massachusetts to England in the ship Elizabeth. I believed him to be the grandson of Sir Richard Clough (founder of the stock market and agent to Queen Elizabeth I) whose second marriage was to Katherine Tudor of Berain, great-granddaughter of Henry VII, King of England. I traced her ancestors a long way back, through Jasper Tudor (half-brother of Henry VI), Owen Tudor (founder of the Tudor dynasty and married to Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V), all the way back to Ednyfed Fychan, Chancellor to Llywelyn the Great.

I then discovered that Sir Richard was NOT John Clough's grandfather, rather his GREAT grandfather. How do I add in an "extra" generation, without having to delete all of Katherine of Berain's ancestors, or all of John Clough's descendants?

Regards,
David

You can only delete someone with a single connection / link to the rest of your tree on GR. Otherwise, as you suspect, you have to delete down from the top or up from the bottom first. It is one of the limitations of the GR program.

Sometimes it is possible just to edit the details of one or more people to show the correct information, this may be easier than deleting and re-entering.

Why not manage your tree using a program such as FTM? All commercial programs allow you to correct relationships quite easily by unlinking and re-connecting entire branches, if necessary. Then, periodically you upload a gedcom file to whichever web sites you wish to have your tree on.

Could I export the gedcom from GR and then edit it on FTM? Does family tree maker allow you to add an extra generation?

Do you have an off line programme? If not, it might be best to get one. Loads out there, some free to down load.

When you have, download your GR tree to your home computer. You then ought to be able to unlink Sir Richard as the grandfather, create the true grandfather of John Clough as a son of Sir Richard, then link them up again.

Haven't explained it very well - sorry.

David

FTM is far more flexible than the tree on GR. Your safest option would be to export your GR tree via a Gedcom file and load it into FTM under a completly different tree name to any other trees that you may have. This way you can play around with FTM learning how to do what you want without any danger of corrupting the layout of any existing tree you may have.

Using the File>Export File>Selected Individuals to export the generation you wish to move and their descendants to a new temprorary family tree. Then delete that same generatioon and their descendants for your existing family tree. Add the missing generation to the correct location/parents. Finaly use File>IAppend Merge>Selcted Individuals command to bring back the generations from the temporary tree to add them to the correct location/parents.

This is why it would be wise to experiment on a completly new tree with a different name to any existing tree until you get the hang of it.

This is one possible solution, other people may come up with better solutions.

Michael

Thanks for your help.

I exported the tree and did the simple detach/attach and it seems to have worked. I'll see what happens when I import the file.