Adding marriage event to parents
I have many instances of having a christening record that mentions the parents of the child but I haven't yet found a marriage event for the parents. I'd like to create marriage events for the parents, using a "before <date>" based on the earliest christening of their children. I know that christenings can happen at any age, but I believe this will provide at least directional guidance for my research.
I'm not familiar enough with the schema to trust that myself with the script, and would appreciate any assistance. This is RM9.
Thanks!
I wonder if it's a good idea to add a pro forma Marriage to the parents. It does not tell us much more than having linked them to the child. The Christening record is evidence of the parenthood and their names and maybe occupations but is insufficient for the Marriage event. Would it not be better for analysis to search for persons with 1 or more children but no Marriage fact than to be searching for persons with a Marriage fact that has no sources?
That said, I see I wrote a more basic query over a decade ago for an earlier version of RM that added a Marriage event more generally but not with dates. What you want is considerably more complex, involving the ChildTable, EventTable and manipulation of Date and SortDate.
I think such an SQLite script would be pretty complicated. I'm pretty fluent with SQLite. But unless there were at least hundreds if not thousands of couples who needed the pro forma Marriage fact, I would add them by hand from within the RM user interface.
In Edit Person screen with Show Child Events turned on, it would be pretty easy to see a reasonable date to use for the marriage event. It might be harder to find the couples who need the marriage fact from within RM. But an SQLite script to find such couples would be pretty easy.
@ve3meo I understand your point. However, my challenge is I have dozens, maybe hundreds, of christenings with incredibly common given names for both parents: William, John, Richard, Mary, Jane, Elizabeth, etc. So when I have , for example, a christening for a Mary Whitby daughter of William and Elizabeth Whitby, I need to determine if I've already got that couple entered. My strategy has been to look for a marriage event with the right names in the right place a christening event. Looking for other christening events with the same two parents is proving very time-consuming. Maybe I'm missing a smarter strategy?
@thejerrybryan I don't see a Show Child events setting, only Show Relative Events. But turning this on degrades the signal-to-noise ratio too severely. Am I missing something?
I oversimplified. Under the 3 Dot > Options menu in Edit Person, turn on Show Child Events and turn off all the other options. Then in the main Edit Person, turn on Show Relative Events. At this point, Show Relative Events will show only the child events. Look for the first Child event.
I'll try to work you up a SQLite script to make finding the couples easier.
Here's an SQLite script which will find individuals who have a Christen fact and who have parents who do not have a Marriage fact. The logic is very literal. For example, if an individual has a Christen fact and no parents, they will not be listed. It does not check to see if the individual might have a Birth fact in addition to a Christen fact. Etc.
Uploaded files:Thanks for the detailed steps, and for the script. Much appreciated!
when I have , for example, a christening for a Mary Whitby daughter of William and Elizabeth Whitby, I need to determine if I've already got that couple entered.
Maybe I've misunderstood what your end goal is and need clarification devoid of what you think the procedure might be (your OP is for a tool in a procedure). I read this to mean you have acquired a christening source for a Mary Whitby and you want to find the right one to which it should be tagged among the many Mary Whitby's already in your database, some of whom having no parents and some having parents with names that match those recorded in the source. Once you've found the right Mary or determined you do not have her, you go to town using that source for all it's worth.
Is that an accurate description of your goal?
Not quite, but I realize I did not describe this very well. In fact, as I write this reply, I begin to re-think what exactly I'm trying to accomplish. Please consider this a revised OP:
The situation arises when a christening record is the first artifact I find for a new person. Say I find a christening record for Mary Whitby, and I want to add her to my db. The christening document tells me her parents are William and Elizabeth Whitby. I search my RM for marriage events between William's and Elizabeth's looking for a couple in the right time and location to likely be Mary's parents. Unfortunately, I don't have such an event. However, I happen to remember having a William - Elizabeth pair who were parents on a christening record for a Richard Whitby two years earlier in the same parish.
The problem is, searching through the plethora of William's, Elizabeth's, and Richard's is very time-consuming. And, I don't trust my memory to actually recall a previous record every time. My thinking is, if I had created a marriage event for William and Elizabeth when I linked Richard to them as his parents, dated as "before christening date", I would more easily have been able to re-locate them when adding Mary. If Mary's christening date was earlier than Richard's, I would update the marriage date accordingly. I'm likely going to start doing this with new christening records going forward.
So why the OP? I currently have hundreds of christening records where the parents don't have a marriage event. I'd like to "backfill" these marriage events.
I'm open to any suggestions to address my need; it doesn't have to be a script if there's a smarter way to solve this.
So, combining scripts from @thejerrybryan and @ve3meo, I get the following which is close to what I'm aiming for: Add_Marriage_from_Christening.sql.
I'm using MIN(Date) to get the earliest date in cases where families have multiple christenings (and to avoid creating multiple marriage facts for a family).
Does this look like a reasonable approach? Am I missing anything?