Alias Smith & Jones

Waiting with bated breath for Bob's reaction..............

 

I have only 12 Smiths in my tree, all of them related to me by marriage only. My favourite is a man called Spateman Smith, my 6x great grandmother's second husband. He was 20 years her junior (so an 18th century toyboy), and after she died he married a Jones. She is one of only 7 Joneses in my tree, though 3 of those are blood relatives.

 

Perhaps a good idea Phil, even though I hang on to your every word. I have to in order to understand half of what you are saying. Although to be fair your 'Jones' dialogue amused me greatly particularly the Pembrokeshire/Camarthenshire bits. I am sure your new 'Smith' discoveries will bring you the same delights and just sorry I appear to be the catalyst for you discovering them. Mind you I might have misinterpreted the reason for wanting to ignore me, after all most people do not need a reason. At least you can now have your very own Alias Smith & Jones moments.

 

But how many have Smith as a first name? In my wife's Tree a 4th Great Grandfather was Smith John 'W' derived no doubt when a John W married a Mary Smith. Then a descendant ressurrected it to bestow on a 4th son, again as Smith John W. It seems to have been a Northamptonshire/ Bedfordshire thing because the Tree also yields a Smith Gammage and a Smith Hemmings from these areas.

I admit I found none in my own Tree.

 

I'm back!! Off to a good start with parents and 10 siblings for Eliza Smith, so all is forgiven - though I don't expect to keep that up (the good start, that is).

I already had an "Alias Smith & Jones" through my grandmother. Her niece, Iris Lillian Jones, married Stanley Hazzard Smith and I have a DNA match with the grand-daughter of their first child .

 

This rather long posting may warrant its own setting, but as it follows on from Helen's point about ..."all of them relating to me by marriage only" it has spurred me to highlight something that constitutes a 'difference of opinion' between my wife and I (and no I am not seeking marriage guidance counselling) . In a nutshell it poses the question "Who should be included in a Family Tree"? My wife has her own particular view on this subject which differs vastly from my own.

I dare say many will guess where this is going but for those who cannot, she believes quite strongly that unless someone is blood line, they have no place in her Tree. So in technical terms if they have no place on an Ahnentafel Chart (or more simply an ' Ancestor Chart' as I see LC now calls it), then they just 'aint' family!

To bring that into contect with this particularly posting subject, I related to her about her about how a 4th Great Grandfather had the first name 'Smith' which she both accepted and knew about anyway. I then mentioned one of the other names - to be precise Smith Hemmings - to which she responded.."he's not family so why is he in there"? I said, well the fact that your sister (to be fair a half sister, much older and who died a few years ago) married a Hemmings might have had something to do with it, and Smith Hemmings was her husbands' grandfather. But though she is fully aware of this she does not consider the Hemmings part of her Tree.

Even more peculiar, she even considers the man she knew of as a maternal Grandfather as a child, and later realised he was her grandmother's second husband - having lost her first husband (her mother's father) in WW1 - was not real! The same reaction when referring to the 6 Aunts & Uncles from the second marriage. They too were not 'real' even though she attended umpteen family gatherings organised by them. In her eyes only one Aunt and one Uncle were real, as they too - like her mother - had the same father. Her grandmother's first husband the one lost in WW1, who my wife (quite rightly) reveres very much.

Although by now all 8 Aunts and Uncles (2 real & 6 step) like her mother are decesased. I believe one of her 'real' female cousins still lives, and a few (not sure how many) of those relating to the 6 also. Sadly she has had little to do with them, and to be fair, nor they with her.

So that dear genealogical friends is what consistutes the difference between how I view family and that of my wife. I accept her viewpoint, even though strongly disasgree and wonder if others come across people in their own families who think like my wife... or perhaps yourselves?

PS There is no use in telling me that 'real' can be construed as an acceptable term for bloodline. I know this to be so, but I still think the term 'family' covers much, much more than bloodline even if in LC terms Ahnentafel relationships are prime. Without marriage connections the Tree is merely a trunk and a few stout branches. In short it does not blossom.

 

I have a slightly restricted version of Tim's approach. I have separate trees for each direct ancestor surname that are named appropriately and at least one parent for each family unit is a blood relative of the direct ancestor(s) - which allows me to have 2 independent "Jones" trees. I follow all branches down until the father is not a blood relative in that tree (the children are included). For future reference and because it is necessary information for determining deaths, I have a custom "married" tag for the latter children. This keeps most trees to a manageable size and I use FTM to merge new versions of these trees into my overarching DNA tree.

For DNA "match" purposes, the DNA tree has an exemption so that paths to matches can be included with appropriate identification.

 

I do the same as Tim. So the 12 Smiths I mentioned in my previous post were all married to a blood relation of mine, though not necessarily a direct ancestor - they could be married to an aunt/uncle or cousin.

 

When people are involved in a project like LostCousins, I believe that they can miss out a lot if they only include blood relatives in their tree. They may not have as much interest in other individuals who are related only by marriage but excluding the vast majority of the population from consideration and matching will undoubtedly result in less contacts and information from other project members.

It makes little sense to me for anyone to include all of a country's population but close in-laws can sometimes be more relevant than distant blood relatives. As I have previously mentioned elsewhere on this forum, there have even been instances where some of these apparent non-blood relatives of mine have eventually been shown to be blood relatives when sufficient research has been completed.

As far as LostCousins is concerned, I would suggest that members should include the whole birth family of first level non-blood relatives on their My Ancestors page where they appear within the census returns for appropriate years. Of course, including individuals who are more remote from the immediate blood-line will show rapidly decreasing returns.

 

Surely the 6 aunts and uncles from your wife's grandmother's second marriage are half aunts/uncles, not step aunts/uncles and thus blood relatives. Or does your wife dismiss half-blood relatives too?

That's a good idea and one I might pursue with (e.g.) my step-grandmother, who brought up my mother from a young child. I have ignored her birth family up to now, but perhaps I shouldn't.

 

Using this tool is good to find out if there are any duplicate entries in the tree.

 

I include everyone in the house on the census returns because who knows why these people are there under titles such as "visitor" and maybe, as I have discovered, they are sometimes not just "visitors" but are related in some way to the household.

 

You were sort of right, Bob!
I was replying from memory when I said I didn't have any Smith or Jones in my tree.
I still do not have any Smiths, but I do have 2 Jones.
My cousin's daughter's first marriage was to a Jones and they had a child.
But after a divorce and 2nd marriage, I had forgotten that she was a Jones.

 

First off Helen you are of course right the second marriage relatives are half aunts & uncles, my use of the term step was incorrect probably influenced by my wife thinking them a 'step-away' from her bloodline.

But an interesting Paradox arises in that one of those Aunts was the favourite (half sister) of her mother's. The two with spouses in tow regularly went on holiday together. Indeed when I first met her family, it was she and her husband to whom I was first introduced. Her mother was of course close to her full brother and sister, and indeed her other half siblings, so the 'step-away' was really part of the mind set of her daughter -my wife. With the exception of course of the one (half) Aunt & Uncle to whom she was fond. Hence the paradox!

My wife and her half sister were also very close. The half came about over the double tragedy of their mother losing her father in WW1 and her first husband in WW2. My wife's sister was from the first marriage and my wife from the second. So the second paradox for my wife is in accepting that although she knows they were half sisters that somehow does not count, except perhaps for the observation that her sister's marriage and resultant offspring were "not really bloodline". But again a paradox creeps in because the one she does keep in touch with is her niece - really a half-niece - her sister's daughter, who she mosts definitely regards as family.

 

I have a few pairs of siblings who have married blood relations of mine. I then include at least the parents of the siblings in my tree to show the connection.

 

Yes, she tends to think in straight lines so direct line or those covered by Anentafel are certainly 'real' as far ashe she is concerned, but she does accept bloodline ties to those as well, provided there are no twists and turns along the way.

However it should be noted that as I research her Tree it is constructed as my own - which I oft' describe as trunk, branches, twigs and leaves - but to save argument, I produce charts that are filtered to omit those that do not accord with her own viewpoint of 'real' family.

Reading a few of the responses I can see the way I construct my Trees differs from some of you (save perhaps Bryman who appears to think along the same lines as myself) but I also own to also having 'Offshoot' Trees. These are produced for family to allow me to pursue a specific family loop which I might not normally cover, or perhaps not in so much detail.

 

I always include the parents of somebody who marries a blood relative, if I can find out who they are/were. When Ancestry calculates the relationship and I see 'mother-in-law' or father-in-law' I do not take that line any further back and I do not include their siblings.
I do not record any Facts about the in-law people either.
I construct the tree in that way because when I use FTM to create a descendant or similar report, it will show who the parents of a spouse are/were.
For instance: David Jones married Mary Smith daughter of Samuel Smith and Joan Bloggs.

 

That goes even beyond my own methodology Heather. Where on earth do you show Census 'visitors' and especially the more frequent 'lodgers/boarders' in your home Tree, or within Ancestry for that matter, even if LC entries do afford some categorisation under 'Miscellaneous' or 'Unknown'.

I accept one can sometimes 'twig' that they may be family related (as with Marriage witnesses) and in Tribal Pages I can add a note to that affect on the page of the Head or spouse. But unless I know for sure they are family related they stay only as aide memoire notes. I am intrigued to know how and where you record them in your own Tree.

 

Whilst I accept what you say and do something very similar I tend to 'wing' things more than follow a set rule. This means I sometime DO take 'in-law' lines back further and DO make quite extensive notes, guided only by my 'nose' so to speak. This can mean my Ancestry Tree is fully extended and my TP one truncated (probably with copious notes to explain why this is so) and vice versa, where I keep the Ancestry Tree minimal and my TP one extended.

I understand why others keep to a rule of thumb, but it is just not suit my style. Remember..."nowt so funny as folk".