Merging ancestor on ancestry.co.uk

[dotty.]

This is a puzzler I can't get my head around. My great great grandfather had 9 children with his first wife, the poor woman died 2 weeks after giving birth to their ninth child, a daughter. GG grandfather already had 8 children under 14 and so he gave the baby girl to his brother and sister-in-law and they brought her up, they had lost two baby daughters 10 years before and never had another daughter only 3 sons. My GtGt Grandfather remarried less than 2 years later and with his second wife he had 11 more children, including a set of twins.
Anyway, the daughter he gave away only married after her Uncle died in 1921. On her marriage certificate she gave her father as my Gt Gt Grandfather who had died in 1918 (after falling down stairs drunk).
Ok so my actual question is not quite as interesting, how can I show Lizzie as belonging to two families? Can I 'merge' her profiles from each? She was baptised within days of birth before her mother died, but then is on the census as daughter to her uncle and aunt for 3 census returns and as i say, gave her father as her biological father not the uncle that brought her up, (she married aged 36.)
any technical ideas would help!

[Rose Maybud]

I haven't found a satisfactory way of achieving this either. The nearest I can suggest if you haven't already done this is to click on 'Edit this person' from Lizzie's profile page; click on 'Relationships'; then 'Add an alternate father' and 'Add an alternate mother', which lets you add her uncle and aunt as adopted parents. You can then 'set as preferred' whichever couple you want to see on her profile. It seems it's either/or and not both (which I would prefer to see) and it messes up the list of children on the profiles of the parents if you set the adopted parents as preferred. Grrr.

[dotty.]

thanks Rose, I did that last night but of course I still have her in both family groups, I don't want to delete her from her uncle and aunt as she is their 'daughter' for 36 years! Of course the ancestry line is the same for the paternal side, but not the same on the maternal side. I was hoping I could merge the two but it's not catered for, though this was not a 'legal' adoption at all.

[Rose Maybud]

I was hoping someone would come up with a better answer overnight after setting the ball rolling...never mind...
I have on occasion made use of the 'suffix' part of the name to enter '(adopted)' to clarify the position when looking at the profile. I have also used suffix for aka names, military titles and the like.
Looks like you'll have to choose where Lizzie should appear and perhaps add a note under the 'birth' with the explanation above pasted. I guess the clue is in the title of the hobby - if you count yourself as a genealogist you will be interested only in the biological parents. It's us 'family historians' who want to reflect what actually happened.

[dotty.]

OMG Rose you are so right and now guess what else has turned up after further delving last night, I found Lizzie's marriage and she married a widower, I then went to look for his first wife and when I found her details and then checked her on the 1911 and 1901 census, we are only bloody related! Well by marriage, she was the aunt of my great aunt's husband! Not on the same side though, Lizzie was my grandad's Aunt and her second husband's first wife was my Grandma's brother-in -laws aunt! Small place Todmorden!

[Rose Maybud]

I have become convinced that the world, well, Wales and England at least, is a small place after chasing up siblings of ancestors, previous marriages etc because I have found so many links between people on my assorted trees. Even my mother and father were 'connected' by marriages between distant cousins. I guess the point is that the people at the time wouldn't have known and it's only the ridiculously easy access to BMD and Census records etc (compared with life before internet) that has made such discoveries possible. There is an amazing tree on Ancestry: 'Heirs of William Hares 1705' (William Hares was a lead miner in Shipham, Somerset) and Ancestry has flagged this tree so many times in my research. Quite gobsmacking... even one my Irish lot in Newport, Monmouthshire married a member who strayed over the Bristol Channel. I always say that it isn't the strength of the tie you find that matters - it's the fun you have in finding it :)

[TheOtherHalf]

Sounds like a real dilema. I would be interested to know how to do this as someones tree Im doing at the moment wants me to research the family who fostered her and brothers, rather than real parents but I would like to do both and connect them up. Probably means doing 2 different trees and somehow linking them

[Rose Maybud]

I have seen the option to 'save person to another tree' but I can't remember offhand the circumstances - I'll have a better look later.

[dotty.]

'in the old days' the hand drawn trees would indicate illegitimacy using a broken line from the mother, adoptions were identified using an appreviation after the name. it's not as easy with ancestry but i'll work it out soon i hope, i keep going back and it's like going around in circles