What If?
What if you were adopted and you have no knowledge of who's who and if they belong in your tree? When I first joined FamilySearch my tree went all the way back to 1100 AD. A year or so later the tree changed. Someone I don't know went in and changed everything. At this point in time, I've given up. It took me over 40 years to find my birth parents. It was an epic!
Answers
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@Charles Sandefur What you posit happens regularly. One changed relationship could attach or detach a whole branch of a tree. And well, when you start looking at people in 1100AD, that's beyond my own research. I'm just barely brushing the 1600's with my own research.
However, changes aren't always bad. As we get access to new record sets we actually do find more information that changes the tree. I'm working on grandmother who died between 1804 and 1822, whose given name we don't yet know, except my research may have found her. And I have a friend whose family believed their grandmother (late 1700s) was one woman and only recently found that grandpa married again and all the children were from the second wife. Her research changed the tree from one woman who we couldn't find any more information on to one who already had four generations researched on her ancestors.
While some changes are due to good research, some are also due to unskilled researchers trying to fix problems they find in the FamilySearch Tree. You'll run into many examples of that as well! Personally, I use the Following tool on people that I have personally researched to keep track of any changes. But I don't follow profiles that I haven't any idea or haven't personally researched on. The FamilySearch Tree is just too big to track everything!
I'm sure that others will jump in here with other ways that they work to make the FamilySearch Tree the most accurate they can.
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To help myself and others I use a source and explain why I added the information. Sometimes I will put a discussion in to clarify. Best of wishes for your success.
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@Charles Sandefur Have you looked in the Change/Research Log in FS to see who changed what that caused the drop of your branch? If they gave sources, you could compare to your sources. Depending on where the source is from (country, time period, history and language), it would only take one bad source to move an entire tree. I found a will and probate documents in Family Search's Full Text, turned the history of a GG Grandfather upside down. Different aliases, different names for wives and children, occupations which all changed from Germany to England and to the US from 1847 to 1888! Like you, I searched for 40 years and found nothing until a month ago! With AI and new search programs many resources are being found and can replace a whole tree. Don't give up! New research helps are coming out all the time!
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