Family Search Policy on Categorizing & Claiming Non-Blood “Relatives”

KathrynKirui

I received an email from Family Search recently with a subject line that said:

”…Benjamin Franklin is Your Relative!”

Yes, intriguing for sure!

And when I signed in and clicked on a link in the email it told me that Benjamin Franklin is specifically my “5th cousin 9 times removed”.

So…good old Ben! Who knew we were related?! ? 🪁

However… when I clicked on a further link that said “View Full Relationship” it revealed a family tree leading back to a pair of sisters, one of whom is shown as a direct ancestor on my father’s side, and the other of whom is shown as the direct ancestor of a man named John Rogers, who was the first husband of Benjamin Franklin’s wife Deborah Read.

It took some moments of visual discernment of this Family Search-created tree finally to see clearly that the tree does not show that Benjamin Franklin is my blood cousin at all.

Instead, Benjamin Franklin is the second husband of my distant blood cousin John Rogers’ former wife, Deborah Read.

If Ben and Deborah gave a family party, would they really put me on the guest list, as Deborah’s ex-husband’s cousin?

Let me just say that I have my doubts.

(And according to the Wikipedia article on Deborah Read, my cousin John Rogers was quite a scoundrel.)

So my question for you is—why on earth did Family Search announce to me excitedly that Benjamin Franklin is my “5th cousin 9 times removed”? Ben is not my blood cousin, nor a cousin by marriage.

He’s simply the husband of a woman once married to my cousin.

So what exactly is Family Search’s criteria for claiming someone as a “cousin” or “relative”?

Also, in March of this year Family Search announced to me with similar excitement that actor Sean Astin is my cousin. And Family Search showed me a family tree that showed I am related to Sean Astin through my father and his father.

But who was Family Search counting as Sean Astin’s father? Google reveals that Sean Astin has an adoptive father, a biological father, a stepfather and a former presumed father. Family Search did not care to elaborate about which of these fathers it is saying is related to my father.

Google says that Sean’s biological father is ethnically Jewish, while my father (as documented by Family Search) is not. So is Family Search perhaps counting Sean’s adoptive father as the man who is a (blood?) relative of my father? ?

If Family Search is going to excitedly announce to me that certain people are my “relatives”, and then upon inspection I find many more questions than answers about the accuracy and general intent of those announcements, Family Search could kindly be clear from the outset about exactly what criteria it is using in each case to declare a particular person my, or any one else’s relative”.

Thanks very much.

Paul W

Perhaps, like me, you would be doing yourself a favour if you unsubscribed from getting these emails. Not that I would get any like this, in any case, as I've not added any relationships between me and anyone else on Family Tree.

Apparently, FamilySearch sends out these emails to encourage people into looking into their genealogy. Unfortunately, they have a very negative effect on those who regard them as gimmickry and having no connection to serious, genealogical research.

Alan E. Brown

In most situations, when FamilySearch looks for relationships it will look for a common ancestor. It will also optionally include a single couple relationship at the beginning or the end, although I didn't think that email campaigns include couple relationships at the beginning or the end (but I could be wrong about the end). That means that a possible relationship would be someone who shares a common ancestor with you (or could be the spouse of such a relative). Note that Family Tree does not distinguish between types of relationships -- biological, adoptive, step, etc. -- if there is a parent-child relationship in the Tree, then it could be used to establish a relationship to someone else. So in the case of Sean Astin, his adoptive father could certainly be used to establish a relationship to you.

I know that some people don't like the fact that Family Tree uses all kinds of parent-child relationships along the way up to a common ancestor and back down to the relative. Some people are very focused on biological relationships; others think adoptive relationships are equally valid for establishing a relationship. I'm not making any judgment about whether that's good or bad, but that is definitely the way it works.

What you said about your relationship to Ben Franklin doesn't sound right. You said that the end of the relationship path includes 2 couple relationships. You are a cousin of some sort to John Rogers, which would mean that his wife could be shown by Family Tree as being related to you. But that wife's husband (Ben Franklin) would not be shown in a relationship chart to you. If somehow there are two couple relationships at the end of the path, then something is very wrong. I've never seen that happen.

This could be made clear if you could show the right-hand side of your relationship chart with Ben Franklin. To do this, go to Ben Franklin and view your relationship. That will show the relationship up from you to your common ancestor, then down to Ben or a spouse of his. Capture a screen shot of that graph and crop it to show just the right-hand side (that will preserve your privacy and only show the descendancy from the common ancestor back down to Ben (or his spouse). If you post that portion of the relationship chart, then we can see what's going on.

KathrynKirui

Thank you to those who responded to my August 3 comments above.

Two days ago I revisited the Family Search email which had announced to me that Ben Franklin is my relative.

What I found, to my surprise, is that the family tree that comes up now when I click on the View Full Relationship link in that email is completely different than it was when I first received that email from Family Search earlier this summer,

This difference starts with the couple at the top of the tree from whom the other branches descend. Yup, they are not the same couple as in the previous “Ben Franklin” tree that Family Search had sent me, though they lived around the same time as the other couple.

And none of the other people shown as descending down on the “Ben” side of the tree are the same people as in the previous tree, either.

And no wonder, since in this new tree my culminating ancestor on the “Ben” side of the tree is not shown to be John Rogers, the ex-husband of Ben’s wife Deborah Read.

Rather, this time my culminating ancestor on the “Ben” side is shown to be Deborah Read herself.

Boy, am I confused! Add to this the fact that the names of the two people shown as Deborah Read’s parents on this new tree are not the same two people who Wikipedia identifies as Deborah Read’s parents. Neither one is the same.

Huh?

Let me just say that what I have learned from all this is that the perception of any particular person’s familial relationship to Benjamin Franklin can be in the eye of the beholder.

And in my eye it seems like reports of my relationship to Ben have been, uh, greatly exaggerated.

Gail Swihart Watson

KathrynKirui Part of this is the way relationships default when you connect a parent or set of parents to a child. A relationship of biological is not set. The default relationship is "add relationship", which most people never notice and never change. That is why all of the various relationship finders simply use whatever connections exist without regard to relationship. Even though I have a great grandmother connected to foster parents who raised her, and the relationship to each parent is set as "foster", that line is continually used to find relatives for me. Her biological parents are also there, and in an unusual move, have a biological relationship set. However this information is not used to make sure all potential relatives are through the blood line only.

Additionally, you have stumbled upon the other reason these relative finders are of minimal use. They rely on the World Tree to be correct. Thus, the (apparently) faulty parents of Deborah Read, and other errors with Benjamin Franklin's family are due to someone like yourself who worked on the tree and put that information there. There is no process to make sure "correct" information is put on the tree, with the exception for early LDS Church members. So when you say you are confused, don't be. You need to simply correct it if you know what it should be and can source your information. This is an open edit World Tree. YOU fix errors YOU find.

Now you know to treat these relative finders with a grain (or bag) of salt.