Spouse's children

I use FTM, Brothers Keeper, Legacy, Heredis and Family Historian genealogy
software (all paid for) but I cannot see on any of them how I can include in
a descendant tree the children born to a mother before her marriage to my
relative. Maybe I am missing something but have tried them all with no luck.

Has anyone any ideas that may help?

Lesley Robertson...

In FTM, call up the lady in question and create another relationship for
her - if you don't know the name of the father of the first children, then
call him something like Yy Nn or Yy [children's surname]. If you don't know
the date of the first marriage, give an estimate to force FTM to place the
relationships in the correct order. Add all the children to this
realtionship.
Lesley Robertson

I would like to send the printout to the Grandmother but not much fun for
the new members of the family if they cannot be on the chart. Although they
are not her descendants they are special to her.

Gene...

I use Legacy, V. 5 Deluxe. If you print a descendant Chart it should
print all marriages and all children. I just tried it and it works for me.

BE Kelly...

In Legacy if you connect the children to the relative as
step-children then you should be able to include them in the report.

the_verminator...

Stated another way it is the problem of Family vs. family - a very
subtle but VERY distinct difference. ;)

sull1927...

Stated another way it is blood vs. how you wish it was - a not so
subtle difference.

In any event you don't lie to future generations; you explain any
known deviation by sufficient notations. One is honest or he is not.

BE Kelly

Joe Makowiec...

I'm not familiar with the packages you cite. However, in The Master
on the person selected. So in this case, you would select the mother as
the focus of the report; the descendancy charts and reports would list
all her husbands and her descendants with each of them.

Robert G. Eldridge...

You're trying to create a descendant tree showing children who are not
descendants of the person you want the report to start from.

It's therefore no wonder that none of the programs show what you want
as if they did they wouldn't be creating a descendant tree.

An hourglass type chart with the mother with two lots of children as
the central person will show both lots of children but it will only
show her ancestors and not her husbands, unless you manually add them.

Denis Beauregard...

If you use so many softwares, you probably want the possibility of
exchanging data between them. In that case, because of the GEDCOM
structure, you have no choice but to create a dummy husband. Anyway,
that child has a father even if he is unknown !

D. Stussy...

In BK 6.0, a person can have TWO sets of parents. Usually, one sets the
primary set to the genetic/birth parents, while the other set, when used, is
the adoptive parents. If you want them to show up, I think you need to assign
this second setting.

However, as these children are not genetically descendant from the grandmother,
why should they be included in listing of her descendants? I assume that the
current husband, not the mother is a descendant of the grandmother in question.