How do I delete a person?
This person has no sources of any kind, including census. I think someone added it (they might have wanted it attached to a different family, but I can't find it because there are too many Mary Ann McAulay's born about 1877-1878. The ID is L2CG-7WF.
Thank you,
K Atkinson
Answers
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You can't delete a profile you didn't create yourself, but you can merge a profile into a suitable higher-quality one via the Merge By ID tool on the Details tab.
There does seem to have been loads of work on this profile going back to 2016, though, so it's possible you might want to contact some of the previous contributors (via their contact ids in the change log) to discuss the situation, though they aren't obliged to respond.
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The first thing to do in situations like this is to thoroughly evaluate the Change Log (using the current version, not the new one being developed) and see who this person was supposed to be. For this Mary Ann, the very first entries are:
You read the Change Log from bottom to top. (I couldn't get the very first one, her death date on the screen).
She was very well documented when the profile was created in 2016 with all the information coming directly from a marriage certificate and a book. Two more sources were added for a total of four. One of these was a census and the other a death record for her.
The question then becomes, why did a user in 2018 do a marge that completely changed her parents? Then why did an other user that same year change her parents again, do a whole bunch goofing around with relationships, put on different sources that don't apply to the original Mary Ann and a different marriage
Then later that year another user took off all the sources, removed her husband, and moved her to yet another set of parents.
Then it looks like you did some merges that got her with her current parents.
Poor lady. She has been badly mistreated. The first bad merge (which is a good illustration of why deleting parents during a merge is generally a really bad idea) just spiraled out of control to get her in her current state.
This is needs major work to fix the situation. Each step in the change log needs to be evaluated and most of the carefully undone. If you don't want to do this, I'd be willing to. I don't work much in Canadian records but I feel quite sorry for Mary Ann and the user who originally created her profile so would be willing to get her back to her original identity that is nicely documented with her original four sources.
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I'm out of town for a few days so have limited opportunity to work in FamilySearch. But this weekend if nothing has been fixed with this profile or if some things were attempted that didn't solve the basic issues, I'll go to work on it.
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@Gordon Collett It gets even worse when you start looking into parents.
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Yes, you have to approach such a project with time and patience. I generally get the entire Change Log open, save it as a PDF and look at every single change including all merges for the person and the parents. Then I check off every line after evaluating it. When multiple families are involved, I'll try to find one child in each family that has not had signifiant changes and use that profile as the base to separate out the families.
This procedure has working very well. I think the worse case I've worked on was a terrible mix up of three people. If I remember right, it took about a week but everything untangled and sorted out very nicely.
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Quiet day so I took some time to start working on this record. This is how I like to permanently document what I am doing:
The Change Log is one of the few places permanent information can be recorded.
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@kecatkinson I've finished cleaning up Mary Ann McAulay's, ID: L2CG-7WF, profile. By restoring all the information and sources originally entered on her profile and undoing a bunch of quite bad merges and name changes, more sources appeared for her and her information sorted out well. I was able to put her with her correct parents because her birth record and that for several of her siblings included her parent's marriage date and place and these were all either 9 March 1872 or 9 April 1872. All the marriage records for a John McAulay and a Margaret Fergusson were for 9 April 1872 in Little Narrows. So I concluded the March record was an error in the source. I did clean up all her sources.
However, her parents need some work still. In particular in cleaning up their sources and residences. Currently John has three different 1881 census residence and two 1901 census residences. I did undo any bad merges for them and incorrect marriages and they are both back to who they were originally created to be.
I do hope I have not made errors with these people. Please correct them if I have, but please don't turn them into different people again.
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Also, something that needs further work is the 1881 census that others have attached to Mary Ann. It's not fully attached and it has some problems, I think, with the current attachments.
A big part of the problems that arose with Mary Ann can be traced to two factors. It appears that there were several John MacAulays living in Nova Scotia married to different women, Margarete Fergusen, Margarete Fraiser, Christie MacDonald, and a Miss Campbell. People did not do a very good job sorting out the various Johns mainly because of the second problem which was that there was a bunch of information in the record images that was not indexed that no one ever added to anyones profiles. Doing so would have protected profiles from all the confusion that arose.
`To summarized for the benefit of others who might read this discussion in the future what happened to Mary Ann L2CG-7WF that turned her into a non-entity in risk of deletion, to show the value of the Change Log, and the problem with highjacking individuals, here is brief outline of Mary Ann's history as shown in the Change Log:
A. Her profile was created in Family Tree with her husband James Parker Smith, parents John and Margaret McAulay, birth information, marriage information, and death information with three sources that clearly documented who she was and all her information, including her 1911 census record showing her and James Parker Smith
B. A fourth source was added that added more documentation for her death and had information that her mother's maiden name was Margaret Fergusson.
C. An Annie MacAulay was merged into her and during the merge her parents were changed to Angus McAulay and Margaret Fergusen and given a new husband William Angus McGregor.
D. She was removed from Angus McAulay and Margaret Fergusen and put back with John McAuley but kept with the husband William Angus McGregor. This resulted in Angus McAulay and his Margaret completely losing their daughter Annie and their son-in-law William
E. Some merges of her parents took place based on a birth record for a Mary Ann born to a John McAuley and a Margaret. The birth record has only Margaret's first name.
F. Several children are added to William and Mary Ann. These children originally had sources attached that showed they were the children of William Angus McGregor and Annie Bell McAulay then the sources were detached, probably because the mother's name was "wrong."
G. Mary Ann's husband James Parker Smith was detached from her as well as the source for that marriage and the source for her death date and information about and a source for the marriage of Willian and Annie Bell was added.
F. The 1911 census for Mary Ann, the wife of James Smith, was detached and the 1911 census for Annie McGregor was added.
H. The source that contained a biography of James Parker Smith that documented his marriage to Mary Ann that was part of her original sources was detached.
I. All of William and Mary Ann's children were detached with notation that they were the children of a William Angus MacGregor and Annie Bell MacAulay.
J. The marriage of William and Mary Ann was deleted and all sources for the family of William and Annie Bell were detached.
H. Merges turn Mary Ann's mother Margaret into Margaret Fraiser.
At this point Mary Ann is with the wrong parents, has lost most of her birth information, has lost her husband, and has lost all her sources. Fortunately the Change Log showed her entire tortuous course of changing and losing husbands, changing and losing parents, gaining and losing children and allowed her to be turned back into who she really was in just a few hours. None of this would have happened if the user who did the original bad merge of Mary Ann and Annie would have read all the sources on Mary Ann before doing the merge.
In this process of restoring profiles back to their original intended identity, I can't stress enough how critical it is to evaluation all merges and understand how to reverse all the effects of incorrect merges. That is what allowed me to also restore Annie Bell MacAulay back to her original intended identity as well.
For anyone not familiar with this concept of Original Intended Identity, here is a great presentation on the subject:
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Kudos to you @Gordon Collett for having the patience to sort out all those bad merges and changed identities.
I've had to do something similar a few times, and it is very time consuming.
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@Gordon Collett very interesting read and informative. I’m currently working to untangle an ancestor by starting from scratch using pen and paper using my grandmother as a solid base and then slowly working my up the line noting names, dates, place names for each ancestor including censuses etc. Of course all the more complicated by little changes in the spelling of the family name. At the same comparing this with the sources and changes made by others. You have given me some invaluable tips particularly as I never thought about downloading a PDF version of a change log. Regards from a grateful user.
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