How to handle unlinked individuals

[yecartmannew]

Hi All

Apologies if this is the wrong place. I have done a search but can't find the answer I'm looking for so here goes.

When entering events/sources such as marriage or census, I want to record the unrelated individuals (witness to marriage/other households on page etc)

I am unsure which is the best way to do this:

a) add a new unrelated individual to the tree
b) use the shared fact/witness feature to free type the names
c) just type the names into the notes/ details fields

If it makes a difference I am currently using Rootsmagic 8 but also have Legacy 9.

My feeling is that I should add them as an unrelated individual in case the names crop up again at some point, but I then run the risk of having hundreds of unrelated individuals. The plus side though if they turn out to be related later I will get a "duplicate person" warning so that I know they are already there in my tree.

What do you guys do?

[Marmalady]

I just use the Notes section to list witnesses, informants etc

[chris_49]

Notes for me too. Often marriage witnesses are related but it would be odd to link them otherwise. A guest could easily search for them.

 I have a couple of "serial" witnesses who sign certs often - because they had nice handwriting? Most people were literate in that era.

[Gadget]

I also add such information to the notes section.  If they later pop up as ancestors or affines, I add them as usual.

[GrahamSimons]

Interesting problem.
Clearly they don't (yet) belong in the family tree. But if they go into the notes, they are not very searchable and if they resurface after a lapse of time, you wouldn't remember them and make the connection.
The notes seems the best solution for this marriage (or whatever else it is - we often see long lists of people attending weddings and funerals, for example, or signatories on deeds).
But it's probably also worth maintaining a separate list of "random individuals" which would be searchable, and therefore which could be used to retrieve information. Database would be ideal, but a card index or an Excel file would suffice.

[chris_49]

Agreed. I think the only way to find them in the tree would be to search the gedcom, which can be displayed in Notepad and usually includes Notes.

You could list existing relations witnessng, etc, in their Notes

[coombs]

I add them to my notes section on my Ancestry tree. And if I find an ancestor witnessed a wedding, I add "Residence" then parish, then add a note of whose marriage they witnessed and the date.

[yecartmannew]

Thanks Everyone.

Looks like the consensus is notes then.

They are searchable, but would just have to be a manual search. I suppose I could periodically do a global search and if I have individuals I have added as people and find a matching entry in notes I can manually add it to the individuals events.

slightly more long winded but would keep the database cleaner.