Adding spouses is a common task undertaken with any genealogy software. It’s also one of the sources of dreaded duplicate records. Considering the frequency of use and the perils, it makes sense to take the time to understand the subtleties of how to add spouses in your genealogy program.
In the genealogy software, Reunion 9 for Mac, you can add new people as spouses (people for whom there is no record in the family file) or people for whom a record already exists in your family file. You can add a spouse to a family card where there is already a different spouse and to one where there is not. In combination there are four situations, all of which I cover in this video from the MacGenealogist Archives, Adding a Spouse in the Reunion for Macintosh Genealogy Software. I also show you how to add a same-gender partner.
Ben,
A couple of comments and a question. First, the video didn't start the first two times I tried. Once it did, the audio dropped out midway through the presentation.
Now the question: When you brought the person in as a marriage to an existing person, it also brought the marriage date and place (20 May 1903, SLC, SL, Utah). How did it know when and where the marriage took place?
Thanks,
Warren
Ben
At about the middle of the video the sound cut out without warning. I've tried a second time and it happened again. If it's systemic, you will hear from others.
Thanks Lewis. I checked the video produced from ScreenFlow and it drops out, so I'm re-rendering it now. I'll post a follow-up article when I have it sorted out.
Thanks for the heads-up Warren.
If only it were that easy to get accurate information into our family files! It looks like an anomaly with Reunion 9.08. I had the couple married and removed Andrew before recording the screencast. A ghost of the link apparently remained and reconnected when I dropped him back in place.
Had I seen this video several years ago it would have saved me a great deal of heart ache. I have ancestors who married first cousins which caused brides and grooms to be repeated throughout my tree. I spent a great deal of time using match and merge. Now I know what to do. Thanks.
This has been a “feature” of Reunion for ever – Reunion allows a person to be married to “None”, and that marriage can have a date attached to it, even when there's no spouse. I often see this after an import and then a match and merge – where one person of a couple was already in the file, and I imported the couple, then merged the 1, that 1 likely has 2 marriages – 1 to None and the 1 that was in the imported file.
So from what I'm guessing Ben did, which was to have the marriage already in place with the date, then break it by dragging one spouse out to the clipboard prior to the demo, then for the demo dragging that spouse back onto that family card it used the marriage that was already there with a date and no spouse.
Roger
I wish I had known about checking the index before adding a spouse. It would have saved me the headache of match and merging.