Why does Peder Hansen keep having his brother's wives added to him?
For three years, I—and several of my relatives—have been trying to keep the page of my second-great uncle, Peder Hansen (9NK8-BJ3), correct.
At LEAST once a month, individuals add to Peder one (or more) of his brother Jens Hansen's (KWNX-56Y) wives and children. The "wives" usually have the same marriage date to Peder as is actually the day they married Jens. Frequently the children (Jens' children) were born YEARS after Peder's death. (The wives and children are not removed from Jens, just added to Peder.)
Some of the folks who add these relationships are not reachable by chat. I have yet to hear back from any of the others what their source is.
Jens IS a well-known early Church member and polygamist. Peder, on the other hand, was married only once. His only two children died in infancy the same year that he did—1854.
Several months after his death, Peder's widow Karen (KWJZ-JCP) DID marry Jens with whom she had six children.
For some reason, I am not able to delete the relationships between Peder's most recent "wives and children." I try to first remove the child from the relationship and nothing happens. When I try to replace Peder with Jens in the marriage (a parental relationship ALREADY in FamilySearch) I get "the system is unavailable" message.
I would LOVE to have Peder's page "frozen"—but I don't think that's done anymore.
Why can't I remove those incorrect relationships? Any ideas why folks keep adding these women and children to Peder?
I'd appreciate any help or suggestions. Thanks in advance.
KariM
Answers
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Good evening.
Have you tried contacting the other contributor(s) through the FamilySearch Chat option in the Family Tree?Depending on your ancestor's position in the early church, it may be possible to have his profile made Read Only.
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Your case sounds eerily similar to a problem I have with my great-granduncle. We are seeing changes that match the pattern you are seeing:
- When a spouse of Jens is incorrectly added to Peder, the marriage event corresponds to the marriage of Jens to the respective spouse.
- A child of Jens by that incorrect spouse is pretty much always added to Peder and the incorrect spouse.
- The usernames of the users who add those bogus relationships keep changing, and they also look very much like computer-generated names (moderators, please don't remove these, since they are not real user names but simply names I made up to show the pattern that is used): Andrew39907, James Bernard14, AJP72508, Barnabas57604, Kal'el Parker, etc.
- When one of these computer-generated users drops in to make changes, that user never reappears in the changelog. That's not at all what would happen if a real user had a disagreement -- the same user would reappear and revert the changes they think are wrong. But these changes are always made by some new user every time.
- None of these users ever respond to my attempts to contact them via Chat. And some of them are not reachable by Chat (I assume because some of these computer-generated user accounts don't have a birthdate, and so these users are treated as under 18 and can't participate in Chat).
- We also see changes happening at least once a month (but sometimes as often as twice in a week). The first change to Peder Hansen started on 18 January 2023, and the first change to my ancestor started on 28 December 2022 (just 3 weeks earlier). That timing doesn't seem coincidental.
I have reported this to Support. Initially my report was rejected on the usual grounds that incorrect changes made to a profile are not abuse, but are simply disagreements over the correct genealogical conclusions. But I then appealed by providing additional details that make it quite clear that this must be some sort of automated system at work. My appeal was accepted (on January 15) and I was told that they would have to work with other teams (with the implication that it could take some time to investigate).
Because your situation is very similar, I just added a link to your post onto my Support case. Hopefully the additional information will be helpful. The fact that at least two of us have experienced the same odd pattern of repeated relationship changes should motivate Support and whatever other teams are involved to take this seriously. I have to think that the existence of two such major incidents would imply that there must be even more such cases.
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You said that you had difficulty removing these incorrect relationships. I just removed one for Peder Hansen involving Jens's daughter Theodora, and it worked just fine. You said you were trying to replace Peder with Jens. That doesn't sound like a good approach, since it would create a relationship that already exists. All you need to do is simply delete the incorrect relationships. All I did was:
- Go to the profile for Peder Hansen (or you can do this from the child's profile, but it's easier from Peder's, since you'll see all the problematic relationships in one place).
- In the Family Members section, click the edit pencil icon to the right of Theodora under Peder Hansen and Karen Andersen.
- Near the bottom of the Parent-Child Relationship popup, click DELETE RELATIONSHIP. Confirm the deletion and supply the reason.
Repeat this for all the incorrect parent-child relationships involving Peder and children he never had, and then do similar steps to delete the incorrect couple relationships with spouses he never had.
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