Dick: The recommended convention is to leave the field blank, which is not at all helpful in your situation. Instead, researchers usually make up their own conventions and those vary greatly. My only advice would be *not* to use some of the previously common abbreviations such as Unk, LNU (Unknown, Last Name Unknown), etc. Some people use an identifier in the name field such as "Wife of John." When I have a pre-1850 US or Canadian census for a family and don't know the names of all of the children who are listed I use "Unidentified Son" or "Unidentified Daughter" as a placeholder. In any of these cases, the Research Notes field or the comments fields associated with the source citation should be used extensively to explain the entry.
Kirsten -----Original Message----- From: Dick Rhindress [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, May 13, 2011 4:52 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [LegacyUG] A person with no name We have found several instances where it is clear that a person existed, but so far there has been no evidence of a name or familial relationship. The evidence and anecdotal information is strong enough that we want to put these people into Legacy because if I don't we'll probably lose track of them. And I do expect that sooner or later we'll stumble upon the rest of the facts. So, is there a convention for what to do with the name fields when you don't have even a guess about names, or AKAs? I know this sounds rather off the wall to folks doing family trees, but I'm involved with a "Community History" project recording 300+ years of people who have lived in town. Legacy is really pretty useful for organizing this data because much of the data is truly the genealogy of a web of families who lived here a long time, intermarried, etc. but these "nameless" individuals are challenging us. -RcR Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
