Imprecise Relationships

I’ve tried to be very careful in my writing about Benjamin Butler (born about 1820, probably in New York) to put the word “children” in quotes when referring to individuals living with him who were of an age to have been his children. It would probably be best to refer to these individuals as members of Benjamin’s household, particularly those who are not enumerated in his 1880 household where relationships are stated (and even those relationships can be incorrect).

 

My work on these individuals is incomplete and at this point I’m not certain which children are his and which ones may be children of one of his wives and a husband she had before her marriage to Benjamin.  Even for his children, I’m not certain in every case which ones were born from which marriage. Benjamin is known to have had two wives: Margaret Stevens and Nancy Jane Wolfe. Benjamin married Nancy Jane in Nebraska in 1864. He married Margaret sometime before 1850 in either Michigan or Canada. He may have had a wife between Margaret and Nancy and may have had children with that wife or acquired children through that marriage.

 

Whoa.

 

Entering any relationships in a computer database is premature at this point as well.

 

I’ll stick to charts to list the children as we’ve shown in blog posts and maintaining the individuals as separate people in any genealogical databases that include relationships.

 

But to be honest, I’m sticking to doing my work in Microsoft Word. There are too many relationships that are imprecise at this point.

Share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.