Unknown parents at the end of a line

[Pauline]

I have a few lines in my tree which I have taken back to the earliest available records, and where I know the names and some details of siblings of the earliest known ancestor in those lines, but not the names of their parents.

I have never been able to decide how best to record these siblings either on my website or in my FH program. I know some people enter the unknown parents as Mr Smith and Mrs Smith and then the siblings can be entered as part of the family, but as well as not being keen on entering people as Mr or Mrs, this method relies on making assumptions about the family - ie all the siblings were legitimate, and all shared both parents.

The option I've used so far is to enter the siblings as a note attached to the 'end of the line' ancestor, and this works OK if there are only one or two known siblings, with very little detail known about them. However, I'm currently looking at a family where I know of 4 siblings, and a fair bit of detail about their marriages and/or spouses, burials, and wills.

So I'm wondering what others do in these circumstances.

 

[Tim]

I use Unknown as the forenames and the children's surname for the father and the same surname but in brackets for the mother. The in brackets for me tells me that this is her married name but still allows Ancestry to search.
This works well and if I manage to find more details then I can add them to these 2 records. I know that I have made assumptions but the brackets and lack of facts tells me this as well.

 

[peter]

I enter all the information that I have, but generally avoid including dummy names for the parents of my direct ancestors since this might prevent Ancestry's ThruLines from working.

The main exception is where I know the name of one parent from the baptism register, but not the other.

 

[Pauline]

Thank you for the thoughts. I was thinking mostly of my own genealogy website rather than my Ancestry tree, as I keep only fairly minimal information in the latter. Also, there would be no issue with ThruLines as these unknown parents are further back.

Peter, I’m not sure what you mean by “dummy names” - would that include things like Unknown Smith?

Generally speaking, both in online trees and with FH software, it is necessary to enter at least one parent on which to attach children, but you don’t need to enter both - and mostly I do know the name of at least one parent. However, on the odd occasion where I don’t know either name, I have so far tried to avoid entering the father as Unknown Smith (or whatever the surname is), but I guess there may not be any viable alternative if I want to enter my ancestor’s siblings.

 

[peter]

Peter, I’m not sure what you mean by “dummy names” - would that include things like Unknown Smith?

As I haven't tried using any dummy names I can't be certain what would affect ThruLines, but there are a lot of DNA matches who are shown as half-cousins by Common Ancestors because of some discrepancy between the name in my tree and the name in my cousin's tree, even though both are intended to refer to the same individual.

There are lots of decisions: does one use the name at birth, baptism, or the name at marriage; should the spelling of the surname be the one that occurs most frequently in the family or the one that is recorded for this particular individual?

 

[At home in NZ]

I was about to look at my tree in Ancestry where I know I have used something different from what is mentioned in previous threads. I had three goes at getting the family view to work then was presented with something new called Relationship labels. AND, surprise, surprise you can actually turn it off.
I have done so because I think I know who my parents are and siblings are pretty obvious.

Back to the point, with my Irish direct line I can only go back to my second great grandfather although I have identified one sibling. For their father, I have used '3rd ggf' for the first name and the last name of the siblings for his last name.
I have also used '3rd ggu' for his brother in order to tie two cousins together.

I did get Hints for '3rd ggf', so it didn't prevent Ancestry from trying to Search. As for DNA, I don't go there.

 

[Pauline]

I did get Hints for '3rd ggf'

I guess that's a good example of how there isn't necessarily any ideal way of adding unknown parents in order to add in known siblings.

As I mentioned above, the examples in my tree are too far back to affect ThruLines (but I agree with points you make on this, Peter) and I'm thinking more generally about how best to record this kind of scenario.

With my more recent ancestors, I can't actually think of any examples where I can positively identify siblings without that having led to the identity of the parents. With more distant ancestors (in the 16th and 17th centuries), it is wills that have enabled me to identify siblings, but a lack of surviving records means the names and whereabouts of the parents have so far eluded me - and may always do so.