Tuesday's Tips provide brief how-to's to help you learn to use the Legacy Family Tree software with new tricks and techniques.
Why add an unlinked individual?
Right now, most of the people in your Legacy Family Tree database are probably linked to you. Another way to say it is that they are all related to you in some way no matter how distant. Sometimes you need to add someone to your database who isn't related to you – or at least you can't figure out how – yet! In a case like this you can add an unlinked individual in Legacy.
I've been working on my personal file and I have a perfect example of why you would want to add an unlinked individual.
I am looking at the civil registry books on the Köln Archives website. I am trying to find the marriage certificate and the death certificate of Catharina (Müller) Bodenheim because I do not know who her parents are. Her parents should be listed on both of these documents (Germans are thorough).
Bodenheim isn't a common name in Köln so every one I run across is of interest to me. I have found a couple of people already that were known to me but I didn't have their documents (now I do), but I just found this death certificate…
Friedrich Adolf Bodenheim born 17 Jan 1888 and died 29 Jun 1943. His parents are listed as Theodor Bodenheim and Sophia (Kröll) Bodenheim. He is listed as being widowed with his wife being Anna Sophia (Hövel) Bodenheim. All of this on one document!
There is no way I am going to pass this information up. Friedrich has to be related somehow but I have no idea how yet.
All I have to do is go to ADD > ADD UNLINKED > ADD MALE to add Friedrich. I will then link his parents and his wife to him and he will be a little mini tree in my file. His little mini tree will be completely sourced and the death certificate will be attached to his death field. In the meantime, if I find more documents for his family I can continue to grow his little mini tree. One day I will figure out who he is and then it is a simple matter of linking him to where he belongs.
By the way, what do you think my next move will be? I will connect to FamilySearch and see if my new friend Friedrich is there and if not I will add him (he wasn't so I did). If he had been there I might have gotten a clue as to how he fits in. Now that I have added him I will know if anyone manipulates him in anyway because my green arrow will turn red.
Find tech tips every day in the Facebook Legacy User Group. The group is free and is available to anyone with a Facebook account.
For video tech tips checkout the Legacy Quick Tips page. These short videos will make it easy for you to learn all sort of fun and interesting ways to look at your genealogy research.
Michele Simmons Lewis is part of the technical support team at Millennia, the makers of the Legacy Family Tree software program. With over 20 years of research experience, Michele’s passion is helping new genealogists get started on the right foot through her writings, classes and lectures. She is the former staff genealogist and weekly columnist for the McDuffie Mirror and now authors Ancestoring, a blog geared toward the beginner/intermediate researcher.
Another reason to add an unlinked individual is when you come across another person of the same name who might easily be confused with someone in your tree. By including this person, you remind yourself of the potential confusion. It is important, however, to clearly note why this is a different person, so that you don’t enthusiastically merge him/her into your tree, forgetting that they don’t belong.