How to stop unrelated ancestors from showing up

TC130

Hello! My grandmother was adopted by a family member and his wife. Since it was a legal adoption, there's records that list them as her parents so I've set up her profile to reflect that. Both her birth parents and adoptive parents are on there and listed accordingly. However, Family Search will notify me with things like, "There's been an update to your 6x great-grandmother!" and when I check, it's from the family of my grandmother's adoptive mother. How do I stop it from connecting me as a direct descendant of my grandmother's adoptive family? Thanks for your help!

Kerryanne

Hi please look at the link below and see if this helps you.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-specify-biological-step-adopted-and-foster-relationships-in-family-tree

TC130

Thank you for answering. I've already listed the relationship as adoptive. I don't want to delete them from her profile because the relationship was meaningful to her and there's legal documents that list them as her parents. What I don't want is updates from family search about "ancestors" who turn out to be unrelated, at least as far as in a direct line. In fact, what reminded me of my original message here was another email today about my "great-grandfather's" birthday. While I don't find those emails useful in general, it's jarring when the person listed isn't actually my great-grandfather. In this case, it's even worse because that's from my other grandmother and her listed relationship there is guardianship - no adoption. She may have been raised by him for several years but she wasn't legally adopted and she didn't consider him anything other than an uncle. I may just remove that relationship if this continues to be an issue, but I'd still prefer it be resolved for the grandmother who was adopted.

Gail Swihart Watson

@TC130 Are you getting email notifications or just clicking the bell by your name? I don't think there is any way to filter your email notifications, but you can turn it off.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Unfortunately, those campaign emails ignore relationship types wholesale -- but you wrote, "I don't find those emails useful in general", which suggests that you should just follow Gail's advice and unsubscribe: on a main FS page (where the URL starts with www), click your name at the top right, choose Settings, go to Notifications, and turn off the slider for "Discoveries about My Ancestors".

TC130

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll turn off those emails. However, another issue has come up. I just received an email from RootsTech about all my cousins there. It was exciting to see possible contacts other than what I have on Ancestry. But once again, first result I checked was actually from my grandmother's adoptive parent. So apparently my cousins list is populated with people who aren't related to me in the way it's suggesting. Likely we're much more distant cousins but not third, fourth, or fifth, which are especially helpful for genealogical purposes.