How do I report or correct an error in a family tree?

WilliamJones80

Gerald Anthony Houle G8ZN-3JY is incorrectly attached as a son of William Donat Houle LQ56-SVN.

The correct name is Gerald Martin Houle, b. 12/24/1937, d. 6/1/2023. He lived in Garner, Wake County, North Carolina. His wife and three children survive him. There was no obituary or funeral service.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

The Family Tree on FamilySearch is an open-edit collaborative tree: there's nobody to report errors to, but.you can make the corrections yourself.

Note that G8ZN-3JY appears to represent an actual person, with his correct birth and death data (from the SSDI), so you shouldn't "hijack" his profile and change him into "your" Gerald. Instead, detach the incorrect parent-child relationship and find or create a profile for the correct son of William and Irene. (You'll need to figure out which Gerald the attached 1940 census entry is actually for.)

Here's the Help Center article on correcting parent-child relationships: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-correct-parent-child-relationships-in-family-tree.

If you're feeling especially helpful or motivated, you could try to find Gerald Anthony's correct parents; attaching them would reduce the likelihood of someone putting him back with William and Irene (or worse, merging him with the correct child that you add).

Gordon Collett

@WilliamJones80 Looking a little deeper, the Change Log shows that the last change on Gerald was a merge of:

• Gerald Houle
• Born: 1938, Michigan
• Died: Deceased
• Parents: William Houle and Irene Guindon
• Source: 1940 census
• No other information

into:

• Gerald Anthony Houle
• Born: 21 Nov 1938, Detroit, Wayne, Michigan, United States
• Died: 23 Jan 1985
• Wife: Miriam Hodgson
• No other information. No sources.

Reason given: Same birth year, marriage, place of residence, etc.

Problem: Same birth year? Does that mean only one Gerald Houle could have possibly been born in all of 1938? Same marriage? Only one of them has any marriage. Same place of Residence? Michigan is a big place. Etc.? I had an English teacher once that instructed the class to never use Etc. in a paper because all it really meant was "I can't think of anything else to say."

As of this instant, no changes have been made to the surviving profile. If you immediately go here: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/changelog/GWYB-SGR you can click Unmerge and these two gentlemen will be completely unmerged.

This will preserve Gerald Anthony Houle's record and should properly remove him from the wrong parents. You will be left with Gerald Houle and you can complete his name, and add the proper birth and death information.

The chance that Gerald Anthony and Gerald Martin both with full birth dates will ever be merged again is probably zero.

If anyone touches Gerald Anthony's record before you get there to unmerge them, things get a little more complicated.

WilliamJones80

Thank you, Julia and Gordon

I attempted to find the proper parents to attach Gerald ANTHONY Houle to before I removed him. I will remove him from the wrong parents now before any other changes are made.

I knew Gerald MARTIN personally and have a story he wrote referencing William Donat Houle LQ56-SVN and Irene Leona Guindon Houle LRZH-ZYR as his parents. I have also located the 1940 census record as proof. I'm not sure how to create a new record for Gerald Martin Houle. If you can help me there please let me know.

Gordon Collett

As I tried to explain, I know is it complicated, you don't need to create a new record, just unmerge. So I went ahead and did that for you.

There is now: Gerald Houle - https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/GWYB-SGR and Gerald Anthony Houle - https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G8ZN-3JY

You will see that they show as possible duplicates. As you get more complete information on your Gerald Houle, such as adding his middle name and full birth and death information that notice will disappear.

I don't generally fix things like this for people, but thought I better separate these two gentleman while it was still easiest to do.

Also now that the two records are unmerged, there is a hint from Find A Grave for Gerald Anthony Houle that provides his real parents. They are not in the indexed source. You have to go to Find-A-Grave to see them.

WilliamJones80

Thanks again, Gordon.

I wasn't sure if GWYB-SGR is "my" Gerald Martin Houle, but since you have made the change, I will assume it is correct and continue with updates....tomorrow.

I also discovered the Find-A-Grave information for Gerald Anthony but could not find any family to link him within FamilySearch.

Gordon Collett

You're welcome. You can see what I did in the Changes Logs for those two. Just to summarize briefly:

I went to the Change Log for the combined Geralds then clicked on the name of the deleted Gerald Houle to go the page for him. Clicking on Restore in the header brought back the profile for Gerald Houle exactly as it was just before the merge. That record is the one created from the 1840 census record for William and Irene and had just his name, birth year, birth state, and parents. Since you know those are his parents, assuming everything fits for there being just one William and Irene that census record could be for, then you have the right Gerald to be Gerald Martin Houle.

Then I went back to the record for Gerald Anthony Houle. Restoring did leave him with the wrong parents so I deleted that relationship then removed from him other information that had been brought over from Gerald in the merge where were the1840 residence and the 1840 census source. That got the profile back to the state it was in just before the merge.