Dear Gramps’er,
During my database analysis, I noticed that several children of the same parents have intermarried within the extended family tree. I now need to link these children with the SAME parents, but is that even possible?
I would be grateful to learn from your experiences.
Christian Stamm, Switzerland
Perhaps you’re asking about Pedigree Collapse? Such as when cousins marry and you accidentally have 2 copies of the common ancestors?
In that case, YOU CAN Merge the duplicate ancestor Families. (Merging a Family also merges the Husbands and the Wives. It does NOT merge secondary objects… children, events, notes, sources, citations, etc.. Those you have to do by hand.)
Below, the Families view has been filtered for the Given names of the parents. There are 2 candidates for duplicates of the wife with an Unknown Last Name (U.LN.): 2 different known maiden names. First, you open each merge candidate Family and compare against the other Families.
Thanks for this feedback. However, my problem is acutally simpler: I have kids of the SAME parents who, though distant in the family tree, get married. So, if I work myself back in time I am actually confronted with the SAME parents at DIFFERENT positions in the tree and I start DUBLICATING data. It would therefor be logic to connect those kids, even if distant from each other in the tree, to the SAME parents in the tree. But can I or should I do that?
A person (or family/marriage) should only exist in the database ONCE. If two people represent the same person but with different IDs, then they should be “merged” and all the duplicate secondary objects carefully merged too.
However, the same Family or Person may be represented multiple times in a Report or a Chart. (That is expected in pedgree collapse.)
Gemini AI summarizes possible language barrier:
An analysis of Discourse thread #10021 (“Multiple children of the same parents in the family tree”) reveals that language mixing and translation processes significantly hinder mutual understanding within the thread.
The thread consists of two main posts:
christian.stamm)Content & Language Context:
The title or URL slug is in German (“Multiple children of the same parents in the family tree”), but the actual post text was written in English:
“Dear Gramps’er, During my database analysis, I noticed that several children of the same parents have intermarried within the extended family tree. I now need to link these children with the SAME parents, but is that even possible? I would be grateful to learn from your experiences.”
Translation Issues:
The German title sounds very general, suggesting how to simply assign or list multiple siblings.
However, the English text describes a specific phenomenon of pedigree collapse: children of the same parents have married each other within the extended family.
If users read the thread via automatic translations, the subtle difference between “recording normal siblings” and “managing complex kinship relationships/multiple links” is easily lost.
emyoulationContent & Language Context (English):
“Perhaps you’re asking about Pedigree Collapse? Such as when cousins marry and you accidentally have 2 copies of the common ancestors? In that case, YOU CAN Merge the duplicate ancestor Families…”
Translation Issues:
Terminology in the User Interface: The English term “Merge the duplicate ancestor Families” can be easily misunderstood in the German Gramps context. In the German UI, there is a strict distinction between “merge persons” and adding relationship structures.
Substantive Misunderstanding: The responder assumes that Christian accidentally created duplicates (duplicate persons/families). Christian, however, wanted to know how to correctly link existing persons to the same family without creating duplicates.
Yes, language barriers and translation difficulties significantly impede understanding in this thread.
Title-Text Divergence: The German title leads German-speaking users to have different expectations than what the English post text actually requests.
Gramps-Specific Terms: Expressions like “link children” or “merge families” lose their precise Gramps meaning through automatic translation (e.g., “add existing child” vs. “merge persons”), leading to advice that misses the mark.
Dear Community, after months of data collection, my Gramps database contains around 1,600 people with nearly 100 different surnames. Among them, approximately 50 distinct individuals have been entered multiple times (due to missing ancestors). I now need to merge these duplicate records, but I am terrified of losing data or breaking family connections because I don’t know what Gramps does behind the scenes. How can I proceed to avoid any risks?
Before merging, it always recommended to make a backup.
But merging simply moves all the secondary objects from the designating duplicate to the designated primary and deletes the duplicate. It the merged object are People, an attribute with the Duplicate’s ID will be created for reference.
You will still have to merge the secondary objects separately. That includes Children, Events, Citations, Notes, and so on. It is a tedious process.
The only objects that merges automatically are Families. That happens as you merge the second pair of spouses. But if you know there is a duplicate marriage, it is more efficient to merge 2 duplicate Families than 2 pairs of spouses. (1 search & merge instead of 2.)
To assist me when merging, I created a Tag with a hot pink color. This is helpful when you want to merge two John Smith records. Tagging the records will help identify them in the list. Just remember to un-tag the record after the merge.
I do not tend to merge events. If John Smith ends up with duplicate Birth or Death events, just make sure the event that is kept has any notes, citations, images found in duplicate record. When satisfied you can remove the duplicate event from the person’s (or family’s) event list. At the end of the session, run the Remove Unused Objects tool. Doing it each day lets you remember why the event is being deleted.