Legacy - Adding new partners and moving incorrectly assigned children

In my enthusiasm to add people to the tree, I readily admit to having made this mistake myself.

Having found a family on a census, a daughter is not with them on the following census, so I have looked for a marriage. I have found a suitable husband, Charles Bloggs and have found the couple on subsequent censuses, so have added them to the tree.

I have then looked for the husband and his parents before he married. I have found him easily; there he is as one of five children living with his parents, Joe Bloggs and wife Mary. I have added them to the tree then looked for the family one census further back.

There is the family, Joe Bloggs with his first three children including young Charles. There is only one problem though; the wife is Jane, not Mary and she is a different age. So I check the BMD’s and, sure enough, discover that Joe Bloggs was married to Jane. She then died and he remarried to Mary. From the children’s dates of birth, I can tell that only the last two of the five are actually Mary’s children so I now need to correct the tree.

To add a new wife

From the family view, Joe, Mary and the five children listed under them.

• Make sure Joe’s name is highlighted in blue.
• Left click on the spouse symbol, first head on the symbol row on the bottom.
• The wives box opens, click on ‘add new wife’.
• Choose ‘add a new person’ from the next box, a new card opens, fill in the data for the new wife and save.
• The marriage box will open, fill in the details you know, or cancel.
• You will go back to the wives box and Jane’s name will be under Mary’s. Mary being the second wife needs to move down, so look at the bottom right hand corner and use the down arrow to move her.
• Click back onto Jane’s name to highlight her and select.
• You will then have Joe Bloggs along side his wife Jane, but they seem to have no children.

To move the children

• Click in the first empty child space under the couple,
• Choose ‘Link to an existing son’, or daughter depending on the sex of the first child.
• The name list opens, find the child you need, highlight and select.
• A box opens telling you this child is already part of another family and asking if you want to add it to this one, choose yes and the child will appear.
• Repeat the process for the other two children.

To unlink children

• Move back to the second wife Mary, On Joe’s card, click on the spouse symbol which now has a 2 next to it. Select Mary.
• You will see that the three children you moved are still there.
• Right click on the first child’s name an choose ‘Unlink from parents’.
• A box opens, choose ‘yes’. The child will then disappear, repeat for the other two children. They have not disappeared completely, they will still be there when you select Joe and Jane as a couple.

There is a slightly quicker way to move the children, once you are happy with the process. Just right click on the child and unlink from the parents. Move to the screen with the other wife. Click in an empty child space, choose "add an existing child" and select them from the name list. Having gone through the longer process above, this quicker way should make sense.

To set a preferred wife

If a man has more than one wife, you may choose which one appears on the tree as the default wife. You would normally want it to be the one whose child your line comes down through. While you are in the wives box swapping from one to the other, highlight the one you want and click ‘set to preferred wife’.

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