unable to change "living" to "deceased"

KatieReplogle

I created Hiram Rogers LYDJ-KBH (born 1808) several years ago and accidentally identified him as "living." I followed the instructions to edit his "death" from "living" to "deceased." I entered a death date and a reason. Up popped a message in a black box: "Save failed. You cannot change your own record from Living to Deceased." Does it think I am Hiram Rogers?? Every time I log in to familysearch and click on "Person," his entry opens up. I have found another Hiram Rogers who I am sure is the right one. How do I get rid of this guy?

Julia Szent-Györgyi

On the main FS site, go to your profile's Account tab (https://www.familysearch.org/identity/settings/account) and scroll down to where it says "Family Tree Preferences". What does it say there for your "Family Tree Starting Person"? It sounds like you have Hiram entered there, for some reason.

Ruminating on this a bit further, perhaps what happened was that when you thought you were creating Hiram's profile, you were actually editing your own profile. I'm not sure what the best way would be to recover from that, if it is indeed what happened.

Gordon Collett

If you click on Recents so that drop down menu opens, you will see this:

The very first line will always be you. If you have set a different starting person under Accounts, that person will always be second on the list.

If Hiram Rodgers shows on that first line, then the program considers you to be him. This happens when you create a new account in FamilySearch and when first going into Family Tree make the mistake of entering not yourself but someone else as your initial starting person. Then you can never set that person as deceased because you cannot declare yourself deceased.

As far as I am aware, all you can do at this point is to create a new record for Hiram Rodgers and move all family relationships to the new copy of Hiram. Get to the point where Hiram is not connected to anyone else then change all the information in LYDJ-KBH to be you. If you have another copy of you, then merge the two records.

However, if you are the first individual in the Recents menu, that is, Hiram does not show there, then something else is going on and someone at FamilySearch is going to have fix whatever data problem is causing the problem. Your best bet is probably to flag your own post and ask a moderator to contact you about this.

KatieReplogle

Thanks very much, Gordon. I had not attached any records to, or entered any "facts" about, Hiram Rogers other than his birth year (and "living", apparently), so I just did what you suggested - changed his name, sex, and birth year to mine.

KatieReplogle

And thanks, Julia, for your response as well. You correctly diagnosed the problem.