I have a number of instances where the same individual appears twice on a Details page.
For example, the Details page for MZBD-PPQ shows 2 entries for 1 father (MCYJ-68Z). One instance shows a Spouse and children. The other instance shows no Spouse and no children. Is it possible to ‘tidy up’ the record to eliminate the superfluous instance? Please see the attached screenshot.
Answers
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@Anthony Grace
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Short Answer: 'Yes', it is possible to 'tidy up'; but, you need to 'check out' what has transpired to cause this.
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You need to 'check out' the "ChangLog" for the individual/person.
You need to 'check out' the "ChangLog" for the "Patent-Child" Relationship.
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It could be the result of a MESSY "Merge"/"Combine"; or, a WAYWARD "Deleteion"/"Removal".
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ALWAYS 'check out' and assess the situation/circumstances; BEFORE, proceeding with any IMMEDIATE action.
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What you might think you know what you should/may need to do; but, it, in fact, may NOT what SHOULD be done.
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Situation/Circumstances can be complex and require some research before proceeding.
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Just taking a quick look at, both, "George"; and, his Father, "Thomas" ...
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George
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/changelog/MZBD-PPQ
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Father, Thomas
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/changelog/MCYJ-68Z
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There has been a number of "Merging"/"Combining"; and, somewhat, 'Interesting", to say the least.
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You really need to 'check out' what has occurred; and, try to sort out what has gone on and what has been missed.
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Take your time ...
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"Merging"/"Combining" can be a COMPLEX process ...
Addressing/fixing MESSY or WAYWARD "Merges"/"Combines", can be a 'nightmare'.
Even worse, 'later down the track' ...
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Any 'Questions' DO NOT hesitate to ask.
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I hope this helps.
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Brett
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Hi Brett
Many thanks for your guidance. I'll be sure to follow the steps you've suggested and will proceed SLOWLY and CAREFULLY before rushing in to make any hasty changes!!
Best wishes
Anthony
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😀
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Brett is absolutely right to emphasise "make haste slowly" as we say. I'd just add one or two things:
1) When you say "The other instance shows no Spouse and no children", this isn't actually true. If you look at George Glover's profile page (MZBD-PPQ) and take a look at the right hand side where you see his father, Thomas (both versions with the same PID), if you click the down-pointing arrow by the word "Children" below the second Thomas, you will see that your George Glover (MZBD-PPQ) appears.
It's arguable that this is poor design since there's nothing beforehand to suggest the (hidden) presence of a child. Weirdly, if you reclick that arrow (now pointing up), George is now hidden again, the arrow reverts to down-pointing but the word Children now actually reads the far more sensible "Children (1)" (my emphasis).
If I were you, I'd click the arrow until it shows George again.
2) How did it get like this? All sorts of possible answers - maybe merges of 2 (or more) versions of the father and 2 versions of the son that lost a mother. It's also typical to see this sort of situation when one of the baptisms is of earlier vintage and only includes a father, no mother.
The original baptism index record for George did show a mother (named simply Alice) - you can see this in the sources for George. I therefore suspect that someone has merged father and son and dropped the original Alice from the merges, rather than merging that Alice into Alice Marshall, thinking "Alice" brought nothing. Unfortunately, it doesn't merge the families in the way that you might hope. Probably for good reasons.
3) What to do....
a) Follow Brett's advice and take your time.
b) If it were me (and it's not), I'd be trying to get Alice Marshall (MCT4-BQ5) in as the mother of the lower version of George. Make sure George is showing, click the pencil icon to his right, which should give access to a pop-up showing his parents - namely one correct father and one empty mother who has the link "Add Mother". Now you can try to add the ID of MCT4-BQ5 (Alice Marshall) as the mother here. That might work. On the other hand it might give some weird message about relationships already existing (because Alice and Thomas are already married further up the page???)
If it does refuse you with a weird message, what I do (following advice elsewhere) is to create a temporary dummy profile for the mother by clicking the link "Add Mother", then using the By Name option and creating someone called "AliceDummy MarshallDummy" - note the use of that letters "Dummy" with no spaces. The reason I do this is to stop FS trying to say "But this person already exists" - because that way you could just end up back in the same weird message situation. And "Dummy" also reminds me what I'm doing and makes it easier to find again. When you've created "AliceDummy MarshallDummy" as a proper (albeit idiotic) profile, then there should be a proper 2nd family for George and you can then Merge (probably Merge By Id) "AliceDummy MarshallDummy" into "Alice Marshall" - just make sure you get those two the right way round to leave "Alice Marshall" and remove "AliceDummy MarshallDummy".
c) Read all that again before you try it! The only reason I have for the creation of a temporary dummy like this is if I can't get the right mother into the right place first. In that case, I put a dummy in and then merge the dummy away as above.
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Sometimes we have the identical father (same PID) and child (same PID) listed, once with the name of the mother and once without the name of the mother. As has been noted above, this sometimes happens because of two different source documents (for instance, parish and bishop's records of a Church of England baptism/confirmation) where one document lists both parents names and the other only the father's name. If the parent's PID matches and the child's PID matches, the extra listing can be deleted by clicking on the pencil mark to the right of the child's name and deleting the relationship, with the reason being "duplicate." This will delete the second listing for the child.
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Hello Brett
Many thanks for taking the time to answer my enquiry – and your detailed explanation.
Looking at the ChangeLog for MZBD-PPQ George Glover I notice that 1 contributor on 1 day processed 11 Relationship Deletions, 13 Relationship Additions, 2 Merges, 1 Source, 1 Event, 1 Vital Changed, 6 Relationship Type Additions, and 1 Vital Added.
For George’s apparent father Thomas MCYJ-68Z’s ChangeLog the same contributor processed 6 Relationship Deletions, 3 Relationship Additions, 2 Merges, 1 Source, 2 Events, 6 Relationship Type Additions, and 1 Vital Added.
I think the worst thing – with my relative inexperience – would be for me to try to unravel all these entries by making further changes. Family Search is also suggesting 3 Possible Duplicates for Thomas but I have resisted the temptation to go blundering ahead and invoke any of these!
I’m happy to accept your advice on the complexities involved and just accept the status quo. Many thanks again, though, for your kind advice.
Regards
Anthony
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Hi Adrian
Thank you very much for responding to my query.
I’ve also responded to Brett and advised that when I looked at the ChangeLog for MZBD-PPQ George Glover I notice that 1 contributor on 1 day processed 11 Relationship Deletions, 13 Relationship Additions, 2 Merges, 1 Source, 1 Event, 1 Vital Changed, 6 Relationship Type Additions, and 1 Vital Added.
For George’s apparent father Thomas MCYJ-68Z’s ChangeLog the same contributor processed 6 Relationship Deletions, 3 Relationship Additions, 2 Merges, 1 Source, 2 Events, 6 Relationship Type Additions, and 1 Vital Added.
Family Search is also suggesting 3 Possible Duplicates for Thomas but I have resisted the temptation to go blundering ahead and invoke any of these!
I fully accept your comments on the complexities involved and I think the wisest thing for me to do is to do nothing! I have limited experience on manipulating relationships when there have been many changes made as we see on these persons’ records.
I do thank you again, though, for taking the time to reply.
Best wishes
Anthony
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Good afternoon John
Thanks a lot for your response. I'll bear in mind what you've suggested and I appreciate your help.
Best wishes
Anthony
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Interesting John - I just tried this on the Beta Site and (as you would expect) it works perfectly. Both child and parent end up looking perfectly correct. (I've reverted it in case anyone wants to play further...)
It's not a method I'd used before and I was worried that things would be left adrift but - no, not that I could see. The child is still left with his correct father from the entry above and there's no sign of an otherwise-empty family attached to the father (i.e. one with no spouse and no child), which is what I was worried about.
I think the key to identifying this case is what you say about "If the parent's PID matches and the child's PID matches" - if we can get to that stage, it'll be OK.
Thanks for that...
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Anthony - your caution is commendable but can I suggest that you make use of the FamilySearch Beta site on https://beta.familysearch.org/en/ ? (Note the "Beta")
The Beta site FamilyTree is copied from production every once in a while and it so happens that MZBD-PPQ is in there with his two families. The Beta site is provided for several reasons, one of which is for people like us to experiment because if we mess up, it doesn't matter.
I went there to practice John Dyson's suggestion of deleting that extra family. After I'd tried that, I reverted my deletion (go to Latest Changes / Show All on George's Beta site profile and then click the Restore link on the right in the / Show All to revert it back)
In fact I deleted and reverted twice just to make sure I understood and in case anyone like you wanted to try again.
Once you've mastered what to do there, you can do it on the real system with more confidence.
It's my opinion, by the way, that this can't be fixed in any way other than by going forward - what happened in the past and why, might be interesting but the problem is so deep that fixing it by going forward is the only viable option.
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Adrian
I don’t know if I’ve inadvertently made matters worse – albeit only on the beta.familysearch.org link.
As you predicted I wasn’t able to add the ID of MCT4-BQ5 (Alice Marshall) as the unnamed wife of the 2nd MCYJ-68Z Thomas Glover, so created ‘AliceDummy MarshallDummy’ as you suggested. The next step is where I may well have gone wrong. I added the newly created PID (BMSL-7CN) ‘AliceDummy MarshallDummy’ as the 2nd Thomas’s wife, then started the merge into the ‘real’ Alice Marshall. Perhaps I should have done this via George’s mother, rather than Thomas’s wife.
The consequence was the 2nd instance of MCYJ-68Z Thomas Glover being replaced with 6 different Thomases – 5 of them each with 1 child – as shown on the attached summary.
At this point I was baffled and experimenting by drilling down 2 generations to KVT7-GFZ Sarah Allice (sic) Glover whose PID shows a second set of parents LY5F-XF5 George & LY5F-3QF Sarah Glover (and their children) which I believed to be incorrect as their births, residences etc are Kent, not Derbyshire. I removed LY5F-XF5 George from the relationship. LY5F-3QF Sarah Glover remained as mother so I removed this Sarah from the relationship with KVT7-GFZ Sarah Allice (sic) Glover.
Hurrah! It worked – probably by good luck rather than good management!
Thanks again for your guidance.
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Don't be chagrined. When you can work yourself out of a hole and put relationships back to the way they were (if you were mistaken) or back together before establishing source-supported relationships through merging and unmerging (or recreating), you are on your way to understanding. Many of us who merge have learned this through the same thing you are going through. And sometimes most of us use the back button to get out of a merge when we realize that we aren't sure of something that we thought we were sure of until we are in the midst of a merge. Often, backing out and thinking about it, mapping out the relationships on a pice of paper, and coming back after a few hours or days is the way to see things as they actually are (revelation and inspiration work here) and we can accomplish that which we were unable to do before. Just because there are cautions about merging doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done. There is a neat youtube video somewhere explaining why there are so many records in familysearch that should be merged - it is an invitation to merge when you find things that need to be and a justification for familysearch having so many vague records in the database here and there, erring on the side of enterring more records than skipping them because relationships are not clear from limited info on some records/sources. After I watched that video, I became much less frustrated at finding five or ten possible duplicates and going through them to sort them into one, two, three, or four separate individuals or families. I tackle large projects like that about once every to months, and the last time I did it I deconflated one George Smith with 50 children and eight wives into four distinct George Smith families and merged eight wives into four. The time line w/mapping helps separate out different groups/families. It took me two days, and I took lots of breaks, wondering and praying if I was seeing things right.
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Anthony - don't worry about making things worse on the Beta site - it's there for you to experiment with and learn...
Re "I added the newly created PID (BMSL-7CN) ‘AliceDummy MarshallDummy’ as the 2nd Thomas’s wife, then started the merge into the ‘real’ Alice Marshall. Perhaps I should have done this via George’s mother, rather than Thomas’s wife."
So far as I know, a merge, is a merge, is a merge, no matter where you start from - the mother or the wife. What in fact you've shown up is that the family in question is only half done. To put it mildly. If you go to the production site and look (don't touch...) at Alice Marshall ( PID MCT4-BQ5 ), you'll see that she has something like 7 different husbands, all named Thomas Glover.
I would speculate that this might have come from (at least - see below) 7 different baptisms. Because of how FamilySearch extracted the data from the historical Index Records into FamilySearch FamilyTree and its predecessors, the 7 (or whatever) different baptisms created 7 mini families, all with separate profiles - 7 fathers named Thomas Glovers (all with different PIDs), 7 mothers possibly just named Alice (all with different PIDs) and 7 Glover children (all with different PIDs but not always different names). That's just how it happened. Someone has merged all the Alices into one profile, and (at some point) decided that she is not just any Alice, but Alice Marshall. But they didn't go any further - they didn't do the corresponding merges of father Thomas Glover from those 7.
And that is what you see now. (Numbers and event types should not be taken literally)
Except that's not quite true - "your" Thomas Glover already has 6 children - so it might be that there were originally (say) 12 different mini families, in which case all the mother Alices were merged, but only the first 6 Thomas Glovers were merged, leaving 6 or more left over. (Again, numbers and event types should not be taken literally - there's probably at least a couple of duplicated marriages in there as well as baptisms!)
Now - here's the point - (1) I'm telling you this so that you understand, as John does, that's life in FSFT - massive duplication happens. And (2) you don't actually need to work out why it happened in your specific case because, often, the only way is forward - forget how we got here.
I would suggest that before you tackle any more of the Glovers (if you do), you need to check thoroughly whether all those Thomas & Alice Glover children really do belong to the same family. 1814-1837 is a plausible date range - but what if there's another Thomas & Alice Glover marriage in the area? Someone decided that they all have the same mother - but do they?
It's up to you what you want to do but George having two parental families is a minor detail compared to all those other Glover children.
I'd suggest some time spent researching is your first task - then you can start trying things on the Beta site (by the way it gets reloaded every once in a while so things will eventually change).
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Have a link or two to start research on!
The various Parish Registers of St. Alkmund's Church (Derby), 1538-1942 can be accessed via URL https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/585804?availability=Family History Library
The links to the individual films currently have access to the images. (No idea how many are indexed)
What is really odd is that some of the index records for Thomas & Alice's children's baptisms point to images that are on the Bishops' Transcripts - and those images (accessible via URL https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/326756?availability=Family History Library ) are locked off and only available to me at a Family History Centre. LDS members may have online access, I can't tell!
This is odd because in my experience access is usually the other way round - images of parish registers are locked off because the parish in question doesn't agree but Bishops' Transcripts are open.
So one way or another, you may be able to view the registers - if you so desire.
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Many thanks again Adrian for these links. I think I’ve sussed out how to access these – and other -Parish Registers using the Family Search catalogs. These will be an invaluable source of which I was unaware until receiving the detail from you.
As regards your earlier message I take your point about the proliferation of merges and how they can leave loose ends if corresponding merges e.g. on the other parent’s side aren’t completed. Like you say, why spend time worrying over how to correct all the possible permutations. Life’s too short!
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Thanks for your reassuring words!
I did locate a YouTube video explaining how duplicates can proliferate – often with GEDCOM uploads.
Now I’m familiar with the FamilySearch beta site I can use this for practice before proceeding, cautiously, on the live database – and small steps at a time.
Appreciation for all your guidance.
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