What is Race?
My great grandfather’s Details show him as having 2 Races. One Race is “W”. The other Race is “American”. Source is Australian Marriage record which indexes his Race as “W” and his ethnicity as “American “. He was born and lived his whole life in Australia. His parents were Irish. Obviously the Indexing of the marriage is nonsense and should not have been used for the entries as to Race in his Details. My question is what should be entered as “Race”? And what is appropriate language to use? What is Race for purposes of Family Search Tree?
Best Answers
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The "ethnicity" issue is one I have brought up a few times. Folks I've been researching, who were born in Canada, have been assigned "American" ethnicity with no evidence to support it. In fact, the evidence contradicts that fake ethnicity.
@SerraNola You asked me recently if I was still seeing the problem. Here's another user asking about the issue. Please and thanks.
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Since there is so much nonsense in that item, I don't put anything in Race on a person's profile. I'll even remove values that are already in it (though I'm probably only removing W values). My justification is that huge numbers of records don't contain it in the first place; that reality can't be crammed into a single character with a probably dubious range of values and frankly I'd rather people were treated as individuals.
There are other dubious items that I refuse to complete and occasionally remove - such as infant children having a marital status of Single or the converse of a couple with a marriage event being given a marital status of Married.
My guiding principle is - just because an item is there, doesn't mean that you have to fill it in.
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From the marriage record my great grandfather was also given a marital status of “Single” because he was single before he was married.
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@Adrian Bruce1 I also remove, especially when I see multiple instances of "W" and "White" on the same profile, all added by the Census Projects and others. And I make my best effort not to bring any of those fields over when I attach a source.
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@RobertWaddell1 I don't slide over the Married, Single, Widowed from census records, but I do like to add them to the description under Residence. Or at least one should put a date for which that marital status applies.
I find helps me get a better picture of what was going on, especially when there are multiple marriages—eg. 1870 married to Jane, 1880 married to Catherine.
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Thanks to all for answers to my questions. For me there are 3 issues.
1. The use of the Australian Marriage source to add Race details (plus marital status) to my great grandfather’s Details in the Family Tree. This is the easiest to deal with. The explanation is inexperience. I can see (from photo and name) that the person who did it is young (at least 50 years younger than me) and comes from a very different background. Easy to forgive and correct.
2. The indexing of the Australian Marriage resource to include nonsense about race and ethnicity. I am not familiar with the indexing process and find it difficult to comment. However it does appear (as mentioned in another thread on this topic) that details are being included to indexes which do not appear in the original source. I don’t understand why this occurs. And of course in this case the details added were wrong.
3. What is Race? etc. I have googled this question and the answers are very complex. I assume Family Search has no definition for its purposes and it is up to users as to what entries they make. Possibly to be based on stated Race in historical records? Though it could be that the language used in some of these records may be offensive to 21st century ears.2 -
Yes, to offensive or unrecognizable to younger ears. Recently FS has been indexing many 19th and 20th century US city directories where the name was followed by a c to indicate race. Younger indexers had no idea what it indicated. I've lost count of how many times that question was asked and answered.
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@RobertWaddell1 Can you provide link to your great grandfather's marriage record?
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@SerraNola
"Australia, Marriages, 1810-1980",FamilySearch
(https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XTCL-X82 : Wed Mar 05 19:42:11 UTC 2025), Entry for James Donley and James Douley, 1857.
I hope this is what you have asked for.
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FYI - I found the image referred to immediately above, just because I wasn't familiar with these records, and it's image 319 of 454 on film 7720251. Quite interesting, by the way - it gives both parents' names and current and usual adress (never seen that last one before).
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I have seen that image before but had not noticed the current and usual address info. The main issue for me is the spellings of surnames which have been a major obstacle in research. The groom’s father surname spelling has mostly been Dooly. The groom’s surname spelling has mostly been Dooley. On this document the spelling seem to be either Donley or Douley. The groom’s spelling has been indexed as Donley. His father’s spelling is indexed as Douley. In other original documents the spelling has been Dowly, Dewley and infinite other variations. The groom’s mother’s name is entirely wrong this document. Her maiden name was Regan. In this document it is Ralph. I think the entire family at this time was illiterate. The groom’s parents were convicts from Ireland. All understandable but very annoying for a 21st century family researcher.
Also I wish it had been indicated whether or not the groom’s parents were deceased. The fate of the parents is a mystery. There is information which suggests they were deceased but I have been unable to find evidence.
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@RobertWaddell1 - the confusion of "n" and "u" in cursive handwriting is infamous. Throw "w" and "m" (at least) into the mix and we get a series of diagonal squiggles that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Sigh.
As for the multiple variations on Dooley, I've not had that experience but I feel your pain 😕 The infuriating part is that when I see such variants, it's usually obvious that they are a variant, but finding them in an index in the first place is a pain in the posterior.
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