How do I find the correct person when there are several people combined into one?
I am trying to fix some mistakes on a person who a spouse and children attached are not his. He also has the correct spouse with children attached. He has 2 sets of parents on there as well, which I will also fix. I have done a lot of research and have matched my family ancestor to the right spouse and children. But the information is confusing because I am not sure which person this was originally created as. Some information matches my ancestor and some matches another person who is married to the other woman who is on there. How would I go about making sure the person I am removing will still have his spouse and children attached? Thank you.
**very first detail logged on this account was a christening date of 1783, but also had another birth and christening date of 1793 and 1795. The latter is the correct dates of my ancestor.
Answers
-
I would first go through all the sources that are attached and detach any that belong to the other person, and also look at the other person's source and detach any that belong to your ancestor. Next you need to remove your ancestor from the incorrect spouse and replace it with the correct spouse. It is really helpful if you have the PID from the other person so you can add it by ID. You can change this on the details page, by clicking on the pencil mark in the marriage area of the incorrect wife. Make sure you pick the option of replacing the spouse. That should carry over the children to the correct spouse and his wife. You can read more here:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/a-person-in-family-tree-has-the-wrong-spouse
0 -
You can find out who a profile was originally meant to be for by using the Change Log. Start with scrolling all the way to the bottom; if that's not edifying, you'll need to check for merges and see if you can sort things out that way. (You can filter the log for merges.) Merge-deleted profiles are highly uninformative, so you'll probably need to restore at least one, at least temporarily -- but this will have the desireable side effect of giving you a place to put the other person's "stuff" (sources, conclusions, relatives).
But don't worry too much about the "was". What matters, really, is the final result (correct profiles), not the path you took to get there. The change log is like the back of a piece of embroidery: yeah, sometimes it gets messy, but who's gonna know? :-)
2