Should a person be linked to multiple sets of parents when the right choice is unknown?
I've encountered a situation where there are two people with the same name born in the same location at about the same time. A problem arises when one of these people gets married and has children, but it is not known which of the two people it is. What I find in the tree is that the record with the marriage and children has been linked to both sets of parents. Is this a recommended solution or is there a better solution?
The record is LC59-BMJ.
Answers
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In this specific situation I would create a new, 3rd profile for the man with wife and children. I would not attach him to either set of parents. Instead, I would add a Note explaining that either of the two same-name sons of those couples could be him. That is, his profile is a duplicate, but it is to be determined which other profile is the correct match.
I would put the same Note on both of the other two profiles. So, I would write the note explaining the situation as seen from the outside of all families concerned.
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Right now there is just one profile. It is attached to a spouse and two sets of parents. But if you examine the sources attached to it you will see that it is a conflation of two persons. There are two different christening dates.
To de-conflate, because there are so many children, I would work in this order:
- From LC59-BMJ detach both sets of parents.
- From LC59-BMJ detach all the sources also attached to those parents, especially the christening records, and any sources prior to his marriage.
- From each set of parents create a new child Johannes Van Deusen. Hints should immediately help you attach the dangling sources belonging to that Johannes Van Deusen.
- Examine the source lists of all parents, siblings, spouse, and children. Work all hints, and finish attaching all sources not completely attached yet.
- Polish all three profiles of Johannes Van Deusen.
Now assess. Can you tell which of the two children is the man? If not, what additional information might you look for to answer this question?
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dontiknowyou That way of doing it messes with seeing lineage, plus who wants to deal with 2 sets of the same individuals when you've added lots of memories and sources. My husband's line has this exact situation, and I added both sets of parents. No one has disturbed it yet. I have weak evidence one of them is correct; I did 2 trees in Ancestry using my husband's DNA attached to one tree with one couple, and his sister's DNA in an alternate tree with the other couple. I built the lineage out for each couple as that helps Ancestry collect the DNA matches in their ThruLines function. What I learned is that there is a consensus in Ancestry about which couple is correct. Does that make it correct? No, so I leave both couples linked in FamilySearch. If and when more sources open up, perhaps all will become clear, however, the birth location for that person with 2 sets of parents is present day Ukraine. Not sure when more sources will be available.
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Family Tree is a shared collaborative one tree. If two profiles with the same name and overlapping dates are attached as children to a couple, it is very likely that a contributor who happens to spot them will merge them.
What I am suggesting is a temporary stage, while researching the question.
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In some cases, research may not resolve the parentage question due to a lack of records. With enough time, DNA testing might resolve the question, but that might be years in the future, or never.
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dontiknowyou Yes, I have already merged them because there were no sources in one of the sons. A duplicate has already been created again, with no sources and no parents, so no help. So now one, same child in 2 sets of parents. I have found such a lack of sources with parents, too. Father #1 has 1 source; father #2 has no sources. Wife of #1 has no sources, Wife of #2 has 1 legacy source. The 2 fathers are brothers. The list of children in the 2 couples are somewhat different, but have possible overlaps. And of course this is a family of Germans from Russia which gets a lot of attention in the forums for a variety of reasons. At the beginning of Covid I spent probably several hundred hours on this, coming up empty. It is on my to-do list to revisit and dive more deeply into a variety of GFR web sites and databases to see if there is anything new. In the meantime, this guy gets 2 parents, and the preferred set is the couple which garnered so much consensus in Ancestry. dontiknowyou , if you want to look at this, I can give you the ID, but I don't think this is a very pretty project...
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@Gail Swihart Watson , your case is a little different. In this discussion let's stick to @AlanSnyder1's case, please.
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I raised this question about 10 years ago, when another user and I could not agree on the parentage of our common ancestor. As in your case, this involved the "two fathers" being of very similar identity. In fact, there were possibly two other individuals sharing the same name, in the same area, who could easily be considered a match, too.
In my specific instance, a Family Tree senior manager advised it was perfectly acceptable to leave the child with two sets of parents, in a hope further evidence would resolve the issue. In your case, I would add a Discussion item to each profile, explaining the circumstances, but see nothing wrong in leaving things as they are for now. Detaching the child's relationship from the other set of parents might antagonise the other user and lead to a case of an "edit war", whereby the user might reverse your change and the edits could just go on and on until one of you decided to give up altogether!
There are plenty of individuals in Family Tree showing multiple sets of parents (I've found up to five or six sets, in one or two cases), so I wouldn't worry too much about the issue.
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I prefer to use a Note rather than a Discussion because:
- Only the creator can edit or remove it.
- Discussions are not visible on the mobile app.
I will use a Discussion if another contributor tries to edit war with me.
@Paul W I think the unrelated case is confusing us a bit. In this case, there are two different children, in separate families, either of which may be duplicates of the adult man with wife and kids. In this situation it makes sense to maintain either 3 profiles or 2 profiles.
Two profiles would be accomplished by attaching both men to the wife and her children. But when there are many sources for the wife and her descendants this 2 profile option is messy.
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