i will need to re-install Gramps due to a system crash, but maybe i should do it different.
my goal is to set up multiple trees to study and compare multiple possible ancestries of my likely immigrant ancestor for which a long dispute has existed since 1939. i doubt i can resolve it but perhaps i can eliminate some. i may need to work with multiple trees. do i need to have multiple databases (i’ll just number them to begin with) or multiple installs of Gramps? or can just one let me do multiple?
what do you do when your research gives 2 or more possible biological parents for one person any many ancestors above each parent? if Gramps lets you keep all these choices inside “one” tree then this would seem o be what i need to do.
You would follow the same process as if there was multiple marriages except in your case, you would put the same child in each family record.
Normally you would only put the biological children in the specific family record.
I sometimes do this if there are conflicts. It gives me a record to use while the research continues.
I would do that in one tree, because it is easier to compare everything in one tree than in multiple ones. The person of interest would be multiple times in your tree, each one with the alternative ancestries.
You can add a tag into the name of each person, because names are displayed everywhere and you can then identify each alternative ancestries easily without mixing then e.g. when selecting persons. People of one possible ancestries share one common tag.
so, the person who might have many different ancestor research projects would be duplicated, perhaps with different names or tags to distinguish them. then how would that person’s spouse and children refer back?
One of the main considerations is that if you were to have different databases each containing a theory of possible ancestors only one database could be open at a time in Gramps (and only one instance of Gramps being open at a time) that any cross-referencing between theories would be difficult. If all theories were in the same database it would be easier to check for things like… were different people from different theories living in the same village? Not sure if that would be important, I am just positing that as an example.
The Tagging of different family possibilities would be an easy way of keeping the lines clearly defined. And who knows, maybe there would be some overlapping that could be missed if they were in different databases.
My vote, one database giving the problem ancestor multiple sets of parents where your notes can be in one location explaining all the issues and the pros/cons for each set of parents. You already acknowledge that you probably will not solve the mystery. But you are leaving your total research for those that take up the issue after you.
You can do that, if you want. There is no need to duplicate the child or use any other weird trick. You can simply add a new set of parents, just like you would do for a ‘normal’ person, and it will display well in the relations view.
I don’t have this type of situation myself, but I have one that looks close, where persons are connected to two families. One with their mother and biological father, and another with the same mother and the legal father.
In cases of ambiguity, (e.g. a father called fred ) I create a “fred the husband”, and multiple fred1, fred2, fred3…
Each candidate Fred would have his own Events and citations.
“hopefully” in the fullness of time and research it would become apparent which candidate Fred was the real Fred, and the correct candidate Fred and real Fred would be merged.