G37M-WD9 John Bray Coker - wrong parents, totally erroneous tree
John Lafayette Coker was the son of Charles Leonard Coker and Edna Wyatt. When Edna died, Charles was institutionalized at Central Oklahoma State Hospital for several years. During that time John Lafayette Coker and his siblings were temporarily split up among friends and family, and he stayed with the Brays. He used their last name at times as a child, and added it as a middle name for the rest of his life. However, he was not legally adopted by the Brays, he was not born a Bray, he was a Coker. Source: He was my grandfather. I knew him. I met all his Coker siblings. I have strong DNA matches with many descendants of Charles Leonard Coker, Edna Wyatt and their ancestors in Tennessee and elsewhere. This error is possibly due to him being listed as the Brays adoptive son on the 1920 Census, which is not factually correct. As currently shown, descendants of John Lafayette Coker could erroneously trace their lineage through the Brays.
Can this be fixed? Disconnect him from the Brays and assign the correct parents? Thank you.
Best Answers
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The FamilySearch Family Tree is an open edit tree. Anyone can sign in and make corrections, additions, changes.
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@Steve Coker In case you missed Aine's subtle suggestion, take that wealth of information, knowledge and SOURCES that you have & post it to your grandfather's PID.
Set up 'following' for that PID.
Start a discussion (under the "Collaboration" tab.)
Contact all of the other contributors (find the in the record of changes) through the FSmail system & start working together - refer them to the discussion you started.
Best of luck - & yes, it CAN BE FIXED!!
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Thanks to CaptBob and Áine Ní Donnghaile. I'm not new to genealogy but am new to this site, it took a while to dig through the UI and make the correction, which I've just done.
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When I find evidence of children living with adults who are not their parents, I keep them connected but edit the relationship to foster or guardianship. You can have multiple sets of parents and by displaying that you provide a much truer picture of that person's life. I believe this situation always has implications on the the status of the true biological parents and provides more information leaving the relationships intact than hiding it. What is nice is that you will see in an instant there is not a biological relationship.
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Welcome @Steve Coker
As you get to know the site, the Help Center is a great place to read through knowledge articles about frequently asked questions. You might also want to join groups here in community, particularly this one.
You may not be familiar with the FamilySearch Wiki. If not, check that out.
Please do not hesitate to reach out if you need help.
Maile 🙂
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I don't know if you know this, but there is a Coker surname DNA study with the main goal of sorting out and correctly linking together Coker descendancies. See the note on K8XZ-CDJ Whitley Coker Sr.
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I'm Steven James Coker, not the Steve Coker that commented earlier. You are welcome to join our Coker DNA Project and also view our Coker surname project.
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