Your Recommendations Please?

First of all, I had some experience many years ago with setting up a db. Nothing since, so if I am in the wrong place, please feel free to say so.

I am in charge of a very large list of people, mostly dead, for a historical society in my town, and much of the data is on paper or in Excel files. In order to get a handle on how to organize it in a db, I have been entering data from paper to Excel for some time. Gradually, I have been able to combine different things, and sort out data to fit in different tables. A person has personal info LastName, First etc, birth/death data, cemetary records, historical artifacts catalog numbers, military records (I know the height & hair/eye color of civil war vets!) of battles fought, medals awarded, ranks, etc, etc. It is obvious to me that a db would be a much better place to keep this data than in Excel, but that would require a db to be designed. I understand enough about dbs to start the process, but I still have a bit more parsing to do. (You wouldn't believe how many different kinds of information can be shoved into the Remarks field!) I have spoken with some people who work with dbs for corporations, FoxPro etc. and they agree that a db would be better.

The problem that they see (all claim to know little or nothing about Access) is something to do with the Primary Key. Let me give you an example:
John Doe is a person who at present is assigned a personal ID. That ID goes everywhere with him because he is not the only John Doe. In fact I have 7 John Does, not all born in the same century, not necessarily related, hopefully with different birthdates, usually in a different grave, but sometimes the grave is unknown as with many veterans who died in prison, etc. and sometimes there is only an approximate birthdate or something like that, if I'm lucky. Also sometimes gravestones list children's names and it is unknown if the child is buried there or with their spouse. In the case of one woman, there are 4 listings as she was a daughter and married three times with a name on the stone of each husband. Of course, one can assume that she was not buried with the husbands who died earlier than the last one, BUT that is not always true, because sometimes women remarried other men for convenience but asked to be buried with their true love. See, it gets complicated sometimes and this was the reason I assigned each a PERSONAL ID. I had to find a way to reference each one to make sure that they were with the right persons.

For geneological purposes, it is important to have as many relationships as possible connected to each individual. One John Doe might have 4 children by two wives. Each wife has a husband and his ID as well as the children and their IDs listed, under the husband and son and daughter fields which include the husband, son, and daughter ID fields. My DB professionals say that that is a real problem. How do I set up a db so that I keep the correct husband with the correct wife without their respective IDs?

These IDs are a convenience to me as I enter data. They could be dispensed with once they have a Primary Key, AND are related to those other people. The trouble is, I haven't the foggiest idea of how I am going to get that accomplished when I transfer the data from Excel to Access.

And so I turn to you good people for some suggestions, even if it is to go to a different URL and bother them. Thanks in advance.