How do I handle a man who had one birth name, but changed it later?

Question

Just discovered last week that my BIL's grandfather was a bigamist. He started out with his birth name, but changed it entirely when he abandoned his first family. Children with first wife have one name; children by second wife the alias. How do I handle that?

Comments

My personal preference is to place the full new name in the nicknames field, as I did with this profile:

Varney-93.

That method allows me to display both the full birth name and the full alternately used name as complete name units.

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check fondling homes for unwed mothers that's where I found my mother under a fake name keep searching the answers are there

Answer 1

When you start inputting the different surnames,  you'll realize the current structure can handle even this.   What a scoundrel.

Leave the Bigamist's last name at birth (LNAB) as is.   (That will be his 1st wife's "current name",  unless she remarried.)  Hopefully you have a marriage record to support this.

Put the Bigamist's second surname as an  "Other Last Name",  unless he legally changed his name at some point.  If he legally changed his name  put that as   "Current Last Name."  

For his second wife,  treat her as you would any other second wife..... but her  "Current" surname would be the Bigamist's second name.    Hopefully you have a marriage certificate for this marriage!!!!    And birth records for the children,  with the Bigamist's name.

In the biography,  you'll have to explain.  

Sorry for your discovery.

Answer 2

Well, I used his birth name LNAB and then CLN (current last name) was used for his death record.  That would be the following fellow if you wanted some sort of example -- there's probably neater ones

 Calvin Cidney Baze (1882-1966) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree

Comments

What!! You have one too?    I better check my family lines more closely...... maybe some of the guys who reached 30 or 40 and "had no further records"  really just changed their names and started a new family.

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Peggy, ..... yes, if you have any clues at all, check it out.  Sometimes the kids will reconnect with the old man so it pays to check the kids out very thoroughly .  Sometimes you find them buried in the same plot even though they'd not had contact for "50 years" ... found several that way

Found one man when I found his son in a census and lo there was daddy in the same town so one kid at least may well have known where daddy was