In our country before 1812 most couples got married in church. This was a legal and accepted way. To differentiate between legal church and legal state marriages I created a custom type ‘Marriage (church)’. But because of this the date of the marriage doesn’t appear in the overview list, nor is it used for any calculations. Which was expected, because it isn’t the default marriage type. But I really would like this event type to be included. So if I change them the be just ‘Marriage’ they will be included in the list and age calculations, but I can’t see the fact it was a church marriage, nor easily filter on them. Also I already use the description to enter both spouses names, for when linking to witnesses. Where I in one go see, oh this person was a witness at this couples’ wedding.
Any creative ideas on how to solve this?
win 11, GRAMPS: AIO64-5.2.4-r1-1f16a69
The fallback events (for Family events) recognize Engagement or Alternate Marriage for Marriage.
You could change to recording “Alternate Marriage” for either the Religious or Civil Marriages. That would require no modification to the core.
More ambitiously, you could add your custom type to the built-ins and the fallbacks.
But that would require patching the core after each update installation … or submitting the patch to be rolled into the Gramps core code as an enhancement.
Alternate Marriage, didn’t know about that. I only need to learn to read ‘church’ when seeing the word ‘Alternative’ and hopefully never get an other kind of alternative wedding types.
But that will work.
As to Engagement, that is something I hardly ever use. And hasn’t got any legal status. We use a word that roughly translates to betrothal. Which is a legal action, when you register the desire to get married. In modern days it is the ‘intention to get married’. But also I didn’t know that is was a fallback. I noticed that ‘ondertrouw’ (betrothal) is a fallback in the Dutch version, so a different decision has been made during translation.
Anyway thanks for the swift reply. Alternate Marriage it will be. (With the understanding it is a church marriage)
I prefer Alternate for the Civil service marriage… as it is already recommended for Civil Unions and common-law marriages.
Some reports may already have been adapted to interpret it as an alternative to a religious ceremony
Religious ceremonies have no legal status here since 1812. You simply can’t get married during a religious ceremony. Only before the year 1812 a thing as a ‘church wedding’ did exist. Likewise before 1812 we have records of baptisms that perhaps also mentioned births and burials that may sometimes mention deaths. All this to say that it seems a good solution to call ‘church marriages’ before 1812 Alternate. Calling all civil marriages Alternate does feel very counter intuitive. (common-law marriages are non existent here, or at least I have never heard of them)
In that case, for the translation for your language, it might reasonable to change the translation of “Marriage” to “Church Marriage” and “Alternate Marriage” to “Civil Marriage”. This allows the backend to treat the Events without creating a unique condition for your database.
It will be easier than patching the core.
Alternatively, use “Marriage” for all events and add a description of either “Church” or “Civil”.
I wouldn’t know where to begin, and will probably need to redo it after every update. (?)
I have thought about that. Since I link marriages to the witnesses I use the description to put in the names of bride and groom, this way I see to which marriage the witness was present when I have their name active. Adding the word ‘church’ would clutter that information.
I apologise in advance for whatever offence I cause here but a marriage
is a marriage whatever mechanism is used the only basic difference is
the place in which the marriage occurs.So all my marriages are one and
the same some occur in a church, some in a register office, some in a
hotel some in a completely different part of the world as I said the
only difference is the location. Some have a certificate, some an entry
in a register, some a photo of the happy couple in a field announcing to
the world we are married.
phil
absolutely no offence taken, we all do what suits us best. And to me it makes sense to differentiate between a civil wedding and one before such a thing existed. And to you it doesn’t.
True enough. But as genealogists, distinquishing between type is important because it suggests where to search for records that can be cited for that particular relationship.
For example, I don’t need to search for record of a common law marriage. They won’t exist. The best one can hope for is a newspaper mention of the person being a spouse of the other.
So how would I go about translating Alternate Marriage into something else while retaining the fallback?
The Netherlands translator for Gramps is @Jan (Jan Sparreboom)
Let us ask if Jan thinks this is a good tweak to the translation.
Would you do that? I could try, but I think you might be much better explaining the background. If you think it better could be me, then I will also direct him to this conversation, asking him to read your thoughts about the translation and my question.
Issuing an invitation to a conversation is done by just mentioning their username prefixed with the @ symbol. Jan will be notified of this thread because he was mentioned. Then he can be brought up to speed by reading the thread
Brian that is a fundamental difference between our approach I would
never enter or presume a marriage before I had found the necessary record
Both ways work so will leave it at that
phil
You are misinterpreting. Events might be added with a single citation. Additional citations confirm. More citations lead to more confidence.
Typically, the record that I find online most frequently is a copy of a marriage license. Often, the online item is just an index that was compiled at end of year. So it can be used to find the full license or even the application.
The record that I have to find in person most often is from the church in-house records. (The weak citation is typically a newspaper announcement.) So generating a report of Marriages (in date order) for a particular Church provides an effective worklist for a record gathering visit. Just like generating a list of interments for a Cemetery improves efficiency in gathering photos and logging of adjacent interments. (Who are often related.) Such well-organized lists can make Chancellors and Sextons more responsive.
I would hack one file in the program files. /gramps/gen/lib/eventtype.py
Line 226 change
(MARRIAGE, _("Marriage"), "Marriage"),
to
(MARRIAGE, _("Marriage (Church)"), "Marriage (Church)"),
and Line 235
(MARR_ALT, _("Alternate Marriage"), "Alternate Marriage"),
to
(MARR_ALT, _("Marriage (Civil)"), "Marriage (Civil)"),
and then do lines 242 and 281 set what abbreviation will display when called.
These changes will not translate so if you do not use English, make your changes directly into you desired language.
This change will need to be made when new versions are released.
The French civil status is also like yours (which is probably Napoleonic).
Personally, I use Marriage for legal marriages whatever the period, the religious ones before 1789 in the case of France, and the civil ones after this period. And for another type of marriage than the legal one of the time I use the Alternative Marriage type. I don’t have an example in mind before the Revolution but I use it for all religious marriages after