Sorting out difficult duplicates
I think this is more of a "202" question instead of a "101" question.
I am working on a lineage project where the parents of a certain established person are very cloudy. This person was born in 1856, has a documented marriage and documented children. He lived to have a death certificate. He and his descendants are fine.
His PARENTS are where the fog descends and I'm talking here in FamilySearch as well as Ancestry and other places. The parents names are John and Caroline Johnson. I have documented, by 1870 census, 2 couples by that name living at the same time in the same state, in different, but adjacent counties. So problem #1 is that sources on the FamilySearch tree are mixed up between the couples and there seems to be several duplicates. (The kids are all jumbled as well - seems people don't pay attention to the census family groups.)
Problem #2 is what the two Caroline's maiden names are. I am not sure ANY of the Caroline records in FS have been properly sourced as to their maiden names, but there is a popular maiden name that I have seen applied to both ladies. A Caroline with the popular maiden name is living with another woman and some children in the 1850 census in one of the counties. That unmarried Caroline may be the same as one of the later married ones in the 1870 census, but that is unproven. Thus, 3 sets of children are now getting mixed up because people aren't paying attention. The ages of the 3 Carolines are sort of all the same generation; within a decade of each other.
My question: I do not want to sort out existing records. They are a mess. I also don't want to detach sources or children. I just want to create my own new family group, starting from the 1870 census which shows the child who is my established person. I know how to create an unattached family group. I know how to attach sources which are already attached to other people (save them to my source box, person by person then add a source from source box.). The question for you all: is this "ethical"? I know it's not recommended, but is it ok? or is there going to be a thunderous outburst of "this is what's wrong with the tree"? What would YOU do?
My goal is to CAREFULLY document the siblings of my established person to see if I can find out what THAT Caroline's maiden name is. Then, if I'm able, take John and Caroline's lineage back further. Comments?
Answers
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On the one hand, the Tree was "seeded" with thousands upon thousands of known-to-be-duplicate profile groups, so I don't think anyone can complain about the ethics of a single set of profiles that are set up with a clear research goal in mind. On the other hand, though, we're still cleaning up those "seed" duplicates, over a decade later, so the thought of adding more does cause twinges of guilt.
Question: how would you deal with your well-established person's relationships? Would you create a duplicate of him? Would you use that duplicate in your unattached family group, or would you switch him out, putting the new duplicate in the messy family, and the well-established profile in your unattached family? Or would you simply work on the unattached family with one child missing?
I don't quite share your reluctance to edit other people's work -- if it's clearly wrong, I'll fix it -- so "what would I do" is perhaps not relevant to you, but as a thought exercise, I don't think I would quite go as far as creating a whole new "clean" copy to work on. I'd be more likely to explore the change logs, restoring profiles until I had separate ones for each candidate person, and moving the existing sources and relationships around appropriately. Yes, this would involve a fair amount of the things you want to avoid (sorting out existing records, detaching children and sources, etc.), but those activities suit my brain. (I like sliding puzzles and jigsaw puzzles and their logical equivalents.) If you need the "clean" copies in order to have room to think, then I think that it's perfectly fine for you to make that room.
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Since you asked
What would YOU do?
I would create a private tree on Ancestry or any other platform where you can work on it to your heart's content without anyone being any the wiser. Work it through until you have it sorted to your satisfaction, and then work it into the FS tree.
I often do that with troublesome families, especially when I'm helping someone else with their research.
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi My established person is in the tree 2 times that I have seen, and my instance would be #3.
One of the reasons I am hesitant to clean up is because at this point I don't care about John and Caroline #2 who didn't have my established person as a son in 1870. However, the sources are so mixed up with the other couple I would have to do at least some research on both families to clean house. That's the thing. I do know which kids belong in which county and which decade (18150 vs 1870), but I have not begun researching much more yet. I can't start detaching sources until I verify which couple it belongs to. Thus, it seems like twice the work to verify than to simply start from scratch with only the one family set.
I have only run into one other situation like this. I decided not to clean up that one either, but with that situation I was able to decipher the sources off line to identify the correct lineage. This is so much more complicated that I don't think I can track the sources off line. That's why I want to start over with only one family.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile Ha! I have thought about doing just that: creating a private tree on Ancestry. However, if I do that and I get all the answers I need, then I will probably never come back to FamilySearch and clean house.
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I try to make a point of bringing that information back to FS. It's part of my regular workflow.
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I have always felt obligated to use FamilySearch when dealing with non-ancestors, even though I have my family well documented in both environments. I have very few trees in Ancestry that don't contain my family. I think you are correct that Ancestry would be better. I think I will work there.
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If you were to create a new, unattached, family tree in FamilySearch, I think that the system would still look for duplicates of your new PIDs, with the potential of being merged/edited by other people. I could be wrong though....
Is it possible to create what you want in the "Genealogies" section of FS.org?
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I've just spent a week working on a similar jumble of poorly (not at all) researched merges. There was a Flora Sinclair married to a John McArthur, a Flora McArthur married to a John McKinnon, a Flora McArthur married to a John McArthur, and it seems possible there might also have been a Flora Sinclair married to a John McKinnon. All around the same age, in the same county, at the same time. There were several duplicates of each and they were all cross-merged, one profile for A merged with B, an A with a C, a B with a C, etc. Why am I surprised that a woman giving birth three times in one year, to children with different surnames, didn't make them stop and think? As you might have guessed several of these couples also named a daughter Flora and these were merged as well, not just with each other, but with the mothers, daughter of A merged with C, daughter of D merged with B, etc. In all I counted a web of 37 merges just in 'Flora'. To make matters even more complicated other users kept adding sources and information to the combined profile for each of the individuals as though nothing had happened.
I'm probably giving my age away, but in the end I resorted to working it all out on paper.
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@ColinCameron Sounds very like an extended branch of my family - Flora MacLean married Malcolm MacKinnon.
I have a large whiteboard with many colors of markers next to my desk. Sometimes that's where the generations get sorted.
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@ColinCameron Yes, that is happening in my two Johnson families as well. One has a daughter Mary, and the other has a Mariah, 10 years apart (according to the 1870 census). People have taken liberties to say they are the same person and now there is a death cert floating which I have to carefully place into the right family. I think many people don't quite get how complex things can get. One side of a true genealogist must be love of puzzle solving. Love of history and love of family heritage aren't enough.
@LAHS6 You are correct. The system detects duplicates for almost every person record I examine even without me creating more. I looked up 2 sources, a marriage record of my established person and the 1870 census when my person was a child, and yes, every person the records were attached to had one or more duplicates detected. I believe the Genealogies section contains only static trees which you cannot update. It would be nice if we could all have an area there viewable by all but editable only by us. I have decided I will work in Ancestry.
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I figured that the hinting system was part of the reason for wanting to work on FamilySearch rather than an individual-tree site -- yes, there'd be stuff to ignore (such as possible duplicates), but perhaps a straightened-out sibling profile would "attract" that elusive source that might identify their parents. Although I suppose if you're a subscriber on Ancestry, it'll supply hints, too. (For me, it just supplies paywalled annoyance.)
The other consideration in favor of staying on FS is the ease of sourcing. Perhaps you've figured out Ancestry's system better than I have, but it is my experience that attaching a non-Ancestry source there is impossibly frustrating. (Is there a way to not re-enter a source separately for Every Single Person it mentions?) But this may be another factor that's unimportant for subscribers, as it wouldn't matter if Ancestry was paywalling their copy of FS's source.
Whatever you decide, good luck!
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi FamilySearch has not kept up with the big digitization crunch that has been going on in Virginia. My expertise (at this point) as well as most of my lineage projects are with Virginia. Millions upon millions of court related records were digitized and put on Ancestry during COVID. This includes land deeds, wills, probate, guardian and bond cases, etc. I have seen counties where almost none of the images are available in FamilySearch. Ancestry is a paywall that is very high on my priority list to keep in the budget.
I attach non-Ancestry sources as web links. You are right, creating a source from an outside site is impossible, but web links are just as easy to launch as saved sources.
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I also use web links a great deal on Ancestry. And I think they are actually easier to launch than an external source because a web link doesn't hijack the page; an external source does.
One thing I do, in addition to using the web link, is to put that link in the Notes section on Ancestry. I sync with Family Tree Maker and web links don't sync. Notes do - so I have the details saved in my FTM file.
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