why put people in my tree that do not belong?
people that do not belong in my tree
Answers
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If you look at the section of the page of the individual(s) concerned labelled "Latest Changes - Show All", you will see who added the people who are not your relatives.
The problem here appears to relate to your believing you have your own tree. Family Tree is an open-edit project, to which relatives (close and distant) and even those of no established relationship at all, can add information, including (incorrect) siblings, children, parents, spouses, or whatever to your deceased relative(s). It is doubtful they have done this maliciously, but many Family Tree users are either careless or very inexperienced in this type of work, leading to the mistakes you are finding.
If you find so-called relatives that have been wrongly added, there is a link by the name of the person who made the additions /changes, whereby you can send them an internal message. Occasionally, they might even be right and be able to provide evidence for the details they added that you believe to be incorrect. If you establish they are definitely wrong, there is a pencil icon besides (say) a child's name on the page of their parent whereby you can detach the relationship with either or both parents. Likewise you can (and should) detach sources (relating to a christening, say) that refer to the incorrect relationship.
In summary, it is very common for Family Tree users to be confronted with your issue, but there are ways to contact the person who, say, added the wrong relative (no guarantee they will reply, of course!), or to make corrections to errors yourself.
There are articles on the website to which another user will hopefully provide you with links, so you can be clear of the practical ways of dealing with your problem.
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This is a nice video about the collaborative nature of FamilySearch
WHY USE FAMILYSEARCH FAMILYTREE
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Hello @essie dixon,
Here is some information from the Help Center that may help you understand why others are adding to your ancestors.
One of the things it mentions is:
- Family Tree is different from other similar genealogy sites in that it is a single, public tree linked together in families, rather than a site that only allows users to create and manage their own private trees. This distinction means that everyone works together on the same data, allowing for the potential to connect every member of the human family.
Here is a link to a page in FamilySearch with more information and links to other articles and resources:
Best Wishes!
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Please understand that if a census record states that a non-family member is living with the family, I WILL ADD THEM TO THAT FAMILY. For that year, they DO belong there. Please research the people you don't think belong and make sure it is truly an error, then remove the relationship pre instructions that have been given to you. I have several ancestral families that went through crises in the 1920s and 1930s, and I am finding children in all kinds of unexpected places in census records. I also have an ancestor who was a widow, and seemed to have youthful males living with her to help her out. She always called them sons in the censuses, but they were not. I have added them anyway in an effort to someday determine their identity.
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Am I missing something raised in this thread, or have you placed these comments (on census indexing?) in this thread by accident? Not wishing to be rude, but just baffled by the connection with users adding individuals to the "wrong tree".
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@Paul W You are not rude. The original post says this "why put people in my tree that do not belong?" My answer is directed to that.
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yes - but what is the context?
is the context - a person who is INDEXING a census record
or is the context a user who is simply adding people to the family tree and nothing related to an indexing project.
again and again here in the community - understanding the context is the key and as we both ask and answer questions - its good to give background on what our stated or assumed context is.
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@Dennis J Yancey Oh, I'm sorry you look mad! So I do not know what indexing instructions are when a census record shows someone as clearly not a family member. Someone who is a lodger, those instructions should be clear. But when individuals are of the age of children (as we would consider them today, ie under the age of 18), then I am not sure what indexing instructions are. And to be clear, I'm not coming on board with any recommendations either. What I was saying is that I add these children to the family and change the relationship to something more accurate. I do not recall ever seeing these children as a part of the family, so my sensing is the indexers don't do it. I found them not by searching but by stumbling across them while doing something else. I am directing my comments at a descendent who would look at their ancestral family group and see someone NOT in a child-parent relationship and think that someone should be removed. I have done this at least 5 times with different family groups, and I still have 2 more mystery families to go where I may yet find straggler children in unexpected places. Did I offend????? I apologize.
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not mad or offended
just dont think this persons question has anything to do with indexing. (I think you are mis-perceiving the context of the question)
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Gail's comments have nothing to do with indexing, really, either. She's just trying to explain one possible reason a non-relative may show up as a relative, which is one of the many possible answers to this thread's originating (plaintive) "why?".
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Ok maybe my mis-perception then and I apologize.
but this statement that follows really seems to have made many assume it was alluding to census indexing and was rather baffling.
Please understand that if a census record states that a non-family member is living with the family, I WILL ADD THEM TO THAT FAMILY.
a person doesn't get added to a family (in Family Tree) as a child simply because they are living with the family on a census record. (at least they should NOT be)
But an indexer may process a person in the household even if they are unrelated to the other people in the household.
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@Dennis J Yancey Dennis, this thread is not in the indexing category, it is in the FAMILY TREE category. I have nothing to do with indexing, and the original post seemed very clearly referring to a family group in the tree that had interloper people attached. I did not say anything about indexing.
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I think I now know what you are referring to, but perhaps you could confirm.
You say: "...if a census record states that a non-family member is living with the family, I WILL ADD THEM TO THAT FAMILY".
In what relationship to the Head of the family are you adding them? If as children (or perhaps parents), I believe this to be totally wrong. But I really do not understand how else you are adding non-family members to a family.
Your lack of an illustration of the procedure you adopt in these circumstances is baffling me and (it seems) Dennis, too.
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@Paul W I am changing the relationship to guardianship or foster, and I am happy that shows fairly clearly.
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I eventually decided that is what you must be doing, but thanks for the clarification.
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Thanks for the clarification. And I apologize for my mis understanidng.
was just confused since we didnt understand initially the context of your answer being related to foster children etc.
again my apologies.
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I have the same issue. I contacted the two individuals that posted the wrong person. I haven't heard from either of them and I'm at a standstill in checking my ancestry. Is there another way to get this changed?
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Replying to: KathleenSmith11
FamilySearch is an open collaborative system where each one of us has the power to edit/correct/update the family tree. In short, in most cases, if you feel something needs correcting YOU can update it yourself. Of course its nice when people reference the sources and reasons for updating / correcting info. And its helpful to first attempt to make contact with those who originally made the updates (as you did)
But ultimately (even if you don't make contact with the original submitters) if you feel it needs to be updated / corrected and if you have sources to backup your updates - go ahead and make the update yourself.
in most cases you will find EDIT buttons next to factoids where you can change things.
changing relationships is a bit less obvious than correcting facts/events - see below links.
Making changes within FamilySearch Family Tree
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUYT0_CvbBU
How to Correct Relationships
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I have the same problem as the original poster but when I go to find out who made the original post it says added by FamilySearch with a date given. All of these posts have no sources with the post and IMHO are incorrectly added. How does FamilySearch do that? I can repair the incorrect post but without any contact as to why the post was made in the first place? Any answers out there?
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when it says "FamilySearch" as the submitter - it is usually some old data that was converted from some legacy resource (years ago) through some conversion batch process. (and "FamilySearch" is just a system default user account name used in those cases.)
also when FamilySearch on the Internet went live - data from legacy systems was used to initially populate the database - with data that had been gathered for more than a hundred years prior to that. And the "quality of this data" is often not the best.
(such entries do NOT represent the work of some physical individual person who is part of some current army of FamilySearch data inputters who are now hard at work at manually entering data into the system).
Don't expect to be able to contact a submitter in such cases.
Merely correct any data that you have reason to know needs to be corrected.
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