one ID number for two different persons with the same name
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I would like to know how to change one ID number that is given to two different persons with the same name. In my case the name is Peter Wadge (M6TS-SM7) from Lewannick and the family of another Peter from North Hill has been added. My ancestors come from the marriage of Peter Wadge and Thomasin Herring (K24C-QY6) not the Mary Ann Collings union. I have tried adding my Peter's name to his father Charles but it needs an ID number and I have already removed them from his father but I need another number to get his father and family back. I'm sure this is simple but I haven't actually come across this deadlock before.
Jacqueline West
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It appears an incorrect merge was made on 23 October 2023, which has created this situation. You will need to restore the deleted ID reference K21C-DJH, then check / add back any deleted relationships.
Looking at the change log is usually a good way of finding how relationships have been changed / added / deleted, so I would suggest you take time in examining the one for M6TS-SM7 and reverse any incorrect changes in order to restore your family branch to how it was, as well as retaining (against another ID) the details for the "other" Peter Wadge (who married Mary Ann Collings).
Extract from the change log, showing how the work of another user has caused the profile page to appear as it currently does:
Perhaps another Community member would like to add further advice, if they feel I have not explained the required procedure clearly enough.
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@JacquelineWest1, I suppose "one ID given to two people" is one way to think of a conflation, but it doesn't actually describe what happened. What actually happened was that a user held a merge-fest back in October, merging at least eight different profiles named Peter Wadge (and one named Peter Madge) into one. (More than eight: there are also several merges into the father, also named Peter Wadge.)
Given the number of merges and the subsequent attempts at correction, "unmerge" is unavailable, so un-conflating these men will involve restoring one or more of the merge-deleted profiles, and then "relocating" the various conclusions and sources appropriately.
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Well wait until you've got to detangle something like this: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/GHY7-WZB
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/changelog/GHY7-WZB/merges (Hey, thanks Ann2294.)
There's two approaches I would recommend:
1) Break it all down and start over. If it's mainly one person who did a mass-merge spree, just restore every profile they merged. Don't even check whether any of the merges were valid because the entire profile is poisoned. I open every merge in tabs and factory-line click while ctrl-tabbing through them. You'll probably have to do the same for the spouse(s). Then you'll have to go through each restored profile and detach the 'merge pit' profile as a spouse for each. (If both spouses were merged, after the restore, the children will be attached either to the couple and one parent, or to each parent separately. That's the most innocuous of problems, so put off fixing that until the end, or just leave it.) Then you'll have to detach all the children and all the sources from the merge-pit profiles, and remove all the custom events, etc. that have accumulated from the merge. Basically all you're trying to reset it to the state before the merge-spree happened, and at least make it so the system doesn't keep suggesting duplicates to merge in to the merge pit.
The problem with this method is it it gets ridiculously complicated if, instead of merging all the profiles into one, they merged them into smaller piles first, then into bigger piles, then merged all those together. That means you have to unmerge one layer at a time, and because all the sources and children stay attached to each layer, you have to clean all those up separately.
2) The other way to do it, which is much easier in the layered-merge scenario, and which allows you to work in small chunks at a time (instead of tearing the whole thing apart in one go), is start from the children. Open the edit history for any child, and starting from the bottom (the earliest history), look for where each parent has a "Relationship Deleted" event that mentions a merge in the Reason. Find the earliest bad merge -- since a lot of mass-merges happen on the same date, look for that date. (Other clues are if the merged parent has a lot more sources, or when the mother's surname changes.). Open the profile for the parent that got merged away, and restore that. Do it for each parent. That'll restore the last clean, pre-mass-merge version of the parents. All the other cleanup is still required, manly manually detaching the children and sources for the merge pits.
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