Family Tree Maker v10 - Spouse order

Family Tree Maker v10 - Spouse order

So I enter the names of two wives in order of marriage to a man but I have
no specific marriage dates to enter.
How do I then ensure that the descendant tree print out shows wife 2 to the
right of wife 1?
Wife 1 = Man = Wife 2

Charlie Hoffpauir...

FTM defaults to the order in which you entered the names, if no dates
are specified.

Fictitious marriage dates (which I later clear of course) seems to fix the
wife order. It could be a headache though to go back and fix all such
marriages that way if indeed I still have that information.
Is there a way of simply flagging wives to print correctly in marriage order
in a way we know will stick?
If not, what program can?

Charlie Hoffpauir...

Virtually any genealogy program other than FTM. Take your choice.

Phil P

singhals...

Forgive my asking but -- how do you know the order if you
don't have any dates?

Hugh Watkins...

I guess he is importing data from other peoples gedcom
(like a train spotter or birdwatcher)

I use a convention I invented myself and assume dates of birth of
parents are 20 to 30 years before that of the first child (the eleven
year span makes them easy to spot)

marriage one year before fist child listed

I use both assumptions only to make lists and indexes understandable

and because data submitted to familysearch.org may not be modified
I only submit my .ged files to wc.rootsweb.com

when people send me corrections I put them in the next update

Hugh W

Charlie Hoffpauir...

Cheryl,

I find that quite often.... A spouse dies and late in life, the person
remarries.... no children, but nephews/nieces, etc distinctly remember
"Julia" as the second wife of uncle Ned, but have no idea of the dates
of the mariages.

Of course, one could always put in "approximate" or "estimated" dates,
but it looks like the OP doesn't want to do that.

Charlie Hoffpauir

Robert M. Riches Jr....

If there is an event that is known to have happened between
the two marriages (as in known to be after the first and
before the second), and if the software supports it, might
it help to enter marriage date bounds as "before ..." and an
"after ..."? Perhaps one of the nephews or nieces might be
known to have been born after the first marriage but before
the second. On second thought, software probably isn't
designed to make deductions on date bounds, but it would at
least help a human reader figure out which marriage was
first vs. second.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/

Paul Blair...

Sometimes you know the general order of things, but no dates. I have
some tree dwellers like that.

Freddo...

Thanks for the response people.
It's not the order you enter the names but the alphabetic order that will
display spouses left to right in the printout (view).
The before and after idea seems awkward and time consuming to me, if indeed
it works anyway.
So, fictitious marriage dates (entered and cleared) is the only way but I
fear FTM may default them again alphabetically sometime.

Cheers
Phil

Hugh Watkins...

I only use FTM for about 6 years
fictitious dates are the only way

or ignore teh eccentricities
like friendships becoming marriages in gedcoms

Hugh W

Charlie Hoffpauir...

Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/