I received an email notification about a new record for a relative. Something is very wrong.
Altimira Kendall is one of my ancestors, born in 1803. When I looked for this "relative's" relationship, it looks like he was her brother, but he was born in 1843 in Mass., a place pretty far from Ky. where she was married to Cyrus Means.
I think this is a case of same last name in two families causing confusion.
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I received what I thought was great advice about this issue. There is a reason why the computer algorithm led to the hint. It would be to your advantage to try to figure out why. Because if you don't you may continue getting more incorrect hints. It could be that people in both families having similar vital statistics, ie., names, dates, places for birth, marriage(s), or death. It could be that there was a source linked to your person in error, which needs to be removed. It could be an alternate name. It could be a residence. These last 3 possibilities may exist if your person had at one time been merged, then unmerged. This could have changed, but I think that when you merge records everything in the two records gets merged, but when you undo a merge, the restored record has it's original parts again; but, the sources, alternate names, residences and probably other things have become part of the other record and are still there unless physically removed. You may even discover a typo or data error(though the data error should have been identified by the system) that resulted in the record hint. If, in your discovery process you do find some very similar data between the two records, you can use the notes feature to let others know that "even though there many similarities between, person A and person B, they are not the same person". And then site a piece of evidence that proves the difference of the two persons. I have seen where a user then leaves contact information for other's if they have questions or concerns. Then, don't forget to check the little box, so that a warning banner will be placed at the top of your ancestor's page to alert other users that there has been research done on this person which should be consulted before any changes are made. Hope this is as helpful to you as it has been for me.
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@EdithBehm, the Family Tree on FamilySearch is a single collaborative tree. Every profile on it that is marked "deceased" is public, and can be seen and edited by anyone (with a few exceptions, such as some notables, especially LDS leaders, whose profiles are "read-only").
I don't post very many photographs and such here, so I'm not particularly familiar with the workings of the "Memories" section, but I believe everything there defaults to public as well. You have to specifically mark an item as "private" in order for others to be unable to see it or find it.
If there is an error in the collaborative tree, the good news is that you can fix it. For example, if twin siblings have been combined into one profile, you can separate them. There may actually be more than one way to do so, depending on when and how the conflation occurred, but the easiest way, which will work regardless of the antecedents, is to add a new profile for the missing twin, detach his sources from his brother and attach them to him, and delete his brother's alternate name.
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Very likely. Such suggestions are produced by a computer program and should not be taken too seriously. If these suggestions are applicable to your relatives, fine, but they are often of no relevance to ones family: which is why I, and many others, opt out of receiving them.
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I have trouble using this site and don't find the tutorials useful. I already know many of my ancestors on both mother's and father's side. This site was instantly able to fill them in back to before the Revolutionary War, with the original people at the top being the same names found by other family member's research. I have a strong connection to my Mulkey ancestors and a lot of info about them. I came looking for more than names and dates; wanting to read and record the stories that tell who they were. I have found things I can correct, but have only been able to get my mother's record changed from "deceased" to "living". Some of the info may seem trivial, like the missing child on a 3xgreat-grandfather's record, one of a set of twins who died at about the age of 1. The record lists his name as "aka" for the other twin. However, I know that Mary Mulkey and Hugh McDonald had three, not two, children. Their youngest child grew up with the name Oliver Smith, Jr. He tells that story himself in a book he and his McDonald brother had published in the late 1940's about their family tree and I have a copy of the book. Might help a Smith looking for ancestors and I doubt adoptions records exist for this. So far, I'm pretty sure all my memories and correction-comments are "private" and I don't know how to make them "public". (sigh)
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