A wife of a 4th cousin once removed from me and I spend a couple of hours each week working on her f
(since decades before it was called this newest name). My cousin-in-law's maiden name is Woodruff. Family lore says she's supposed to be related to Pres. Wilford Woodruff and her lines go back to early days of The Church, as some of my paternal lines do, too. Yes, I know everyone on the planet are all related to each other and that it's pretty easy to begin to recognize that today through FamilySearch, realizing that the common ancestors between a researcher and an ancestor/relation may be many generations further back in time from the current amount of generations that FamilySearch includes within the great View My Relationship link. We might not be able to see all the connections yet. Also, that the further we go back, the more uncertain the connections may be anyway as we approach around year 400 AD.
However, my 4th cousin-in-law has wondered how she connects to Pres. Woodruff. She would like to see the pathway from herself on up to the common ancestor(s) and down the other side of the inverted "U" to find Pres. Woodruff. Last week I thought I should check whether her connections now exist to him via FamilySearch in Find My Relationship. I checked and they do connect, although in a way I didn't expect because the Pres. Woodruff shows as the husband of one of her 3rd cousins 5 times removed--a woman born 37 years earlier than Pres. Woodruff, only lived 5 years, and died 31 years before he was born, too. I suppose it could have happened that she was sealed to him after her death. I don't know when that practice stopped. I'm not even sure it ever started quite that way but it wouldn't surprise me if it did.
Regardless, I showed her the connection to Pres. Woodruff. I think she was glad to see it, even with the 123 Research Help problems that need to be taken care of if possible, and a bazillion wives with many duplications of them. The Person page is huge.
I also explained to her that there was no way we could have any positive effect on his webpage by doing what we always try to do: i.e., merging duplicates, attaching sources, standardizing place names and dates, etc. He is in Read-Only mode. I suggested to my cousin-in-law that we add the path from herself to him into her RootsMagic file, for anyone who is not yet there but is found in FamilySearch along that inverted "U" until Pres. Woodruff. We could "fix" whoever needs work done on him/her; and that when we get to Pres. Woodruff, just add the appropriate information that is able to be found there that makes sense to her RootsMagic file by typing it in.
So, my question is, is there anybody working on sorting out problems like this as we need to do with other deceased relatives? He's demonstrably related to me too, as a 5th cousin 4 times removed. I get it that you don't want to turn the webpages of prominent Church leaders into a mess by virtual fixes that are spurious and/or just problematic, but it does seem to me that someone with experience untying tight genealogical knots should be allowed to carefully proceed, with whatever guidance would be appropriate.
If there comes a time when you want someone to dedicate time to that kind of work, please let me know. I'm retired and live alone so I have the time. I believe I also have enough expertise to proceed if given the chance to try. What do you think?
Answers
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@CarolMenges I am sending your question to the FamilySearch Family Tree Group @FamilySearch Family Tree for their input on your post.
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Thank you SteveWalker1 ! I was hoping for that kind of help from someone here, and you've sent it along.
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Carol
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I am sorry I missed this post of yours ...
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Can I suggest that you (and, your Relative) try:
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"RelativeFinder"
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RelativeFinder.org
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By the "Family History Technology Labratory" of "Computer Science Department" at "Brigham Young University" (BYU).
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"RelativeFinder" is "Certified" to work, with; and, in, "Family Tree" of 'FamilySearch'.
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IF, there IS, in fact, any link/connection in their Ancestral lines to, President Wilford WOODRUFF, in "Family Tree" of 'FamilySearch'; THEN, there is a very good chance that "RelativeFinder" WILL find that link/connection.
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As, "RelativeFinder", 'digs' (pun intended) a lot deeper in "Family Tree" of 'FamilySearch', than 'FamilySearch' actually does.
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Using "RelativeFinder", I found I am linked/connected to x13 Presidents of the Church (including "Joseph SMITH"); especially, through my "Scottish" Heritage, not to mention a whole lot of interesting people throughout history.
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And, my Wife, is linked/connected to x16+ of the Wives of the various Presidents, also not to mention a whole lot of interesting people throughout history.
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Plus, we are both linked/connected to one of the Presidents.
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And, we are both linked/connected to many "Early Utah Mormon Pioneers" (including a number from, both, the "Willie" and "Martin", 'Hand Cart' Companies; plus, their "Rescuers").
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Not bad, for some Members of the Church from ... "Down Under" (ie. Australia).
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Give it a go.
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There are MANY other 'Bells and Whistles' in "RelativeFinder" that are great ...
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Good Luck ...
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Enjoy
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Brett
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Thank you, Brett,
Yes, Relative Finder is a great tool. It's fun and, as I recall, came out quite a while before the "View My Relationship" tab in FamilySearch did.
Now, of course, View My Relationship shows the exact ancestral route (presuming the connections are correct, of course) from anyone to a person in Family Tree as long as the closest common ancestors aren't any further back than, what, 15 generations or so? I forget the number. But once that connection is made, we can see what is purported to be the exact path from us to someone else, including General Authorities such as Pres. Wilford Woodruff.
The problem I'm hoping to help fix is the huge amount of work that needs to be done in order to be sure the path found in View My Relationship is correct; also, that Pres. Woodruff's data is cluttered with an amazing array of duplicate wives of the same name as well as a ton of other stuff that's accumulated over the course of researchers' contributions. I'd like to straighten as much of that out as I could. It's in Read Only though, and so no one can make any further changes, good nor bad.
It was Relative Finder that first connected me *directly* to the Hapsburgs (or Habsburgs). The original ones in Spain. 13 great-grandparents, that sort of thing. I studied their histories. Not particularly nice people, for sure... Nor a fair amount of their descendants. Regardless, if they were mine, I needed to see whether their ordinances were completed or not, and then take care of the ones that weren't. It was quite a path, full of multiple spouses and fairly uncertain sources. For this kind of research--for famous people--much of their information can be found in the always-denigrated Wikipedia. I learned to use it, as well as the scholarly books I read. They worked together well.
Since at that time there was no clear pathway from me to them, I drew it out as I worked the descendancies from both Hapburg connections--one in Spain and another in another country (part of what's now Germany? I don't recall at the moment). They were directly connected to each other. So I filled out my descendancy tree for generation after generation, towards myself. It honestly took many hours each day, way into the night, for months. After close to a year's worth of time, I found a discrepancy in the records Relative Finder had: there was a woman who is a wife of one of my paternal, early American immigrant ancestors who had two husbands. One was the Hapsburg descendant and the other was not. My lines diverged from Hapsburgs because the husband who is my relative was the guy who was not a Hapsburg descendant. Actually I was strangely relieved. I had, though, spent each week at the temple completing ordinances for people who were not, therefore, mine. I wondered if repentance was in order... Long story short, the strong internal answer was "no." I had completed an ordinance here, a couple of them there, whatever was left out for many generations because they needed to be completed. I'd gone on the best of my knowledge at the time until I untied many very tight genealogical knots and found I could stop with them because someone else ought to finish them off. Many of the earlier ones were now done, some of whom I'd been told for generations were "already completed". They weren't. The earlier statement was said constantly by genealogists who meant well, but today we have more excellent means to find people and check ordinances than we used to have.
So I happily continued on with my quite ordinary ancestors and their descendants. And as I did that, a great many new, extraordinary ones are also a part of the mix. It's quite amazing, this work we're about, don't you think?
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