indexed record for Thomas and Sarah Nolan

Patricia Hancock1

I found an indexed BIRTH record (using Search Records) for Thomas, male, born between 1800-1900 to Thomas and Sarah Nolan in Virginia. When I got to original document, I discovered the father is really MICHAEL NOLAN. The indexed record is UNEDITABLE. What other way could this indexed record be corrected?

https://www.familysearch.org/ark%3A/61903/1%3A1%3A6ZP9-F877

Áine Ní Donnghaile

URL rescued from the mangler: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6ZP9-F877

Julia Szent-Györgyi

The index entry cannot currently be corrected. This may change in the future, but FS is not exactly known for publicizing future plans or anything about contracts, so we can't know if or when.

However, the index is not the data. It is merely a finding aid for the data. It has served that purpose: you've found the data, and discovered that it does not apply to the people you're researching. So, you move on. If you're working in Family Tree and the hinting system offers up this (false) match, you can tell it that it's not a match, with a note about the misindexing as the reason.

(Even better, if you know where Michael & Sarah are in the Tree, you can attach the index entry to them and their son, editing the sources to include a note about the incorrect index. But if there are a lot of Nolans -- as I suspect there are -- and you don't know who the people in the record actually are, then you'll just have to hope that the people researching Michael know to always check the actual record, rather than blindly trusting the index.)

Áine Ní Donnghaile

Since the collection is listed as coming from LVA and a collaboration with Ancestry, it is likely the index is not a product of FS indexing. That would explain why the index does not have an edit option.