Allow users to actually attach to the correct person and not be forced with a mismatch

MLV2

On multiple occasions, an individual is forced to be mismatched or ignored. In this and many other similar cases I've encountered, the mother signed a child's school record using her maiden name such as Mrs A. G. Hunt. But the system now only allows matching to the husband, A.G. Hunt in this case. There is no ability to change parent order, move the incorrect match to the correct person, indicate non-match, etc.

PLEASE allow users to exercise some control by allowing them to move a suggested match to the appropriate person.

Gordon Collett

I assume you are talking about in the source linker.

You can always rearrange individuals so you can link a source record to the correct individual using a combination of the two Change links in the blue bar and the Go To box under the Change link on the right hand side. Sometime you have to set first the left side then the right, sometimes it works best to set the right side first. Sometimes you really have to play around a bit to get it to work right.

Just for illustration purposes, I'll show here sort of the reverse of what you are trying to do.

Starting here:

I am going to attach the source for Louise Mcfarlane to Alfred Marshall Turner, something you would think should be impossible. First I'll use the Change link on the left to move Louise to the Focus Person position, as it is called:

Then I will use the Change Link on the right to move Alfred there:

Now I can compare and could attach the record:

You can use the same type of procedure to get Mrs. Hunt to line up with her Family Tree record rather than her husband's. As I said, it is not always quite this easy, but you can always get it to work once you figure out the right order for shifting people around.

Gordon Collett

PS. If you can't get this to work, post the Family Tree ID of Mrs. Hunt and the URL of the source you are trying to attach and I'll show you how to attach the source to her.

MLV2

In this case that didn't work - the only way to change was for the person on the record, which was the child in this case. What I ended up doing was correcting the record to reflect Mrs A G and then going into her record, from which I finally was able to correctly select the wife. It should be easier, but not every record allows changing or reversing the parental order. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Gordon Collett

Strange. I've never run across an example where it was impossible to get things to line up in the Source Linker. If you run across another like this, could you post it here? I'd like to see what it is about the source that is causing the problem.

MLV2

No, the comments are not applicable. Another case, of many, is at https://www.familysearch.org/search/linker?pal=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AQVSM-H4RD&id=9JWB-YNT&hinting=%2Ftree%2Fperson%2Fdetails%2F9JWB-YNT&icid=fs-hinting

In this case the source is the son's obituary and mentions his father. But in the matching, the son's children can only be added as children of their grandfather.

Gordon Collett

That obituary was not extracted very well. They left off the main person!

The link you sent opens the source linker like this:

To attach the sons properly, click on the right hand Change link:

Scroll down in the list appears until you come to Gary J Wilkerson and click on his name to move him to be the focus person:

Ignore all the warning triangles. Everyone in green is still attached properly. Add the three sons and attach their sources. After you have done that, you should be able to move Eric Wilkerson, one of the newly added sons to be the focus person. then open the parents section above the blue bar. Gary will be there as the father. Then on the left side drag Carolyn Younger up to be Gary's spouse. Add and attach her. With Eric as the focus person you can also drag his wife, Colleen into the proper position to add her and attach the source.

This would not have been as complicated if Gary J Wilkerson had not been missed when this obituary was indexed.

MLV2

Thank you. I've discovered that many of the records from the "United States, Obituaries, American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1899-2012" are indexed incorrectly, leaving out the main person. This is particularly true for the family and descendants of Henry Hertlein GMPG-PW6. There are so many errors as to make working with these sources not worth the time and energy.

Gordon Collett

You've put so much work into figuring out the problems with this index and in how to work with the Source Linker, that I would encourage you to not give up yet. Think of the benefit to your descendants if you take care of all this.

My suggestion would be to just accept the fact that the index is horrible but that it is achieving the sole purpose of any index. It is getting you to the actual record even though in this case it is a typewritten copy of the original record. Try the following procedure:

1. Search the index for someone in that family that should be listed in an obituary, making use of the fact that you now know the primary person will likely not be listed.
2. Ignore the index.
3. Use the original image to find all the information you can in it, everything that never would have been indexed anyway.
4. Use the actual obituary to create or expand the family in Family Tree, adding any missing people unless they are living and you don't want to manage them in your private space.
5. Only after the family is completely constructed, then go into the source linker. At that point things are easy. Position each person on the left using the left side Change link and position the corresponding person on the right by copying and pasting the ID number. Having two side by side windows will make this quite efficient:

Then main reason you want to do this is so that someone who is not taking the care you are won't come in and create a bunch of incorrect family relationships, throwing in children where they don't belong, because of the poor index.