Uncertain who the father is

In my family history there is a person whose grandfather is known. There are two possible candidates for the father role, but so far we have not been able to figure out which brother was the (un)lucky one.
Is there a way to add two possible fathers, without having to resort to labeling them as stepfather.

For what it’s worth: I’m using Gramps 5.1.6 on Ubuntu.

Personally, I’d do this in an odd way.

I would create a placeholder as a sibling to the possible fathers. Then use the Placeholder as the father.

The given name might be “sperm donor (brother Tom or Harry)”

You could add a Note (shared and linked to the 3 parties) explaining the situation and the status of proof.

Not a bad idea at all. That would certainly work in Gramps and whatever website I’m going to upload this to, but It will mess up any graphical representation of the family tree. Something with dotted lines of whatever would be nice, but I guess this is a pretty unusual situation that no one ever cared to cater for.

Thanks for the suggestion.

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For Gramps, it doesn’t matter if you add two biological fathers, as long as they’re both in a family with the mother, and the person as a child. It does mess up graphs and reports though, so it may be better to add an anomymous one, with a note.

I would never mess with the give name.

In the relationships view, you can add as many parents as you want.

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I would add just the one set of parents with the one ‘father’.

Set the Preferred Name as something like Given “One of two brothers” with the Surname. Then add two additional names to the Names tab each for the two brothers. I would set the Name Type to “Could Be”. To each of these name records, you can add a note detailing why each person could or could not be the father.

Note: to add the custom type “Could Be” all you need to do is type it in. This is true for all drop-down lists. Just note that any custom entry like this will not translate if that is something important to you.

I use this “Could Be” scenario most often for the mother as older records do not always have the mother’s maiden name. Conversely, when I find evidence that a possible parent can be ruled out I change the type to “Person Is NOT” with a supporting note. This name entry I will often lock as Private so it does not get added to reports but remains for my reference.

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One of the grumbles is that the Charts only show the Preferred parents. But the user wants to diagram the biological and the adoptive/foster parents.

The other thing is that creating 2 families, one with each brother in a relationship with the known mother is misleading. One of the brothers is uninvolved.

Potential relationships are frequently postulated in a research tree and data is slowly gathered over time to prove (or disprove) the theory. A capacity to tag (and find) a ‘theoretical’ relationship would be useful thing. As would capturing ‘Disproven’ confidence for a relationship, Event or Source. (Multiple negative confidence levels are as useful the current multiple positive levels of confidence.)

Previous threads mentioning ‘dis-proven’:

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Great! Have tried to add having my mother and two fathers to my old genealogical app and it won‘t work.

I’m certain that i’m a bipaternal chimera (it is possible with dispermic activation) as am definitely an hermaphroditic chimera; so, i must try adding my unknown less likely East Siberian or more likely Athabaskan (Navajo?) father from whom i get my appearance, plus my known ”ghost” father from whom i get little ancestry.

I have a separate tree for the ”ghost” father, but whether it could be incorporated into my meaningful tree…?

You can use the graphview to have all the parents and if you use “all connected” you’ll see the brothers.

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For reference, this his is an example on how it would look like in Graph View:


Both fathers is selected as biological.

BTW, I like the “All Connected” feature of Graph View a lot, but sometimes it puts people in odd locations that makes the connections messy (crossing each other more than needed). But its worth it.

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@Mihle

Ta for that graph!

I am getting nowhere with having an MRI-scan to be ordered of my lower abdomen, as i have hypoplastic organs in there as have been indicated by incidental testing, my being a heterogonadal hermaphrodite with probably two ovotestes (removed due to pain caused by mutilation of my genetalia as a child).

I live in a country where the medical system is almost collapsing, so little chance of getting an investigation into bipaternal chimerism—of which has yet to be, to my knowledge, described in any paper, albeit is acknowledged to be possible by geneticists. Any researchers who see this: please contact me as i’m willing to be the subject of any investigation and paper. :grinning:

That is an add-on I had not found yet.

It turns out that I also see something similar in Reports → Graphs → Family Lines Graphs… as long as I include a common ancestor of the brothers and a common descendant as “people of interest”

If one of them or both are uncertain, you can edit the family then click on person, you’ll see a window to choose the relationship:
relationships.1

They are both just as likely. The son in mentioned in his grandfather’s will as “my grandson”, without mention of the father.
The mother is unknown and further information is practically nonexistent; we’re talking late 12th century here. :european_castle:

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