Seeing double ,duplicates that aren't really duplicates

DDeLor

Not far into my ancestors, I had Great grandparents that were cousins marry (same surnames) , their fathers were brothers. The parents of the brothers show on separate branches , same names, same IDs. and continue on with doubles. Is it suppose to be this way? To complicate further, another couple married with same surname though their parents are all different so no split there. I can't merge as IDs are the same and I don't want to break the tree trying ! I suspect the problem may be in the brothers listed in siblings , but I don't want to "break" anything here on Familysearch. Any ideas?

I have RootMagic and my family is making it crash trying to fix it there, every entry on that part of the family has 2 sets of identical parents for all the generations before them. If I try to delete one, they all go and database freezes until I Ctl-alt-del to close the software.

Kerijy

Hello @DDeLor

I have the same situation in my Family Tree.

Yes. The Tree will show your great great great grandparents and further back ancestors twice. That is the way it is supposed to be.

The Tree is a representation of who is whose parents.

Gordon Collett

When you display a fan chart or landscape pedigree chart, the parents for each child will show in the proper place on that chart. If two or more siblings show on the same chart, as Kerrebee stated, all of the siblings will still show their parents in the proper place in the chart. This does show the parents two or more times because that is who belongs in those spots. And then, of course, the tree will be identical back from them. This is really pretty common and is called "pedigree collapse." Google that term if you want to know more about this.

Here is a fan chart for one of my wife's ancestors. The two shaded wedges are identical.

Just leave all the individual correctly linked as children, siblings, and parents. The chart will take care of itself. And look at it this way: It reduces your work! You have a fewer ancestors to find!

DDeLor

Thank you, it's explained perfectly. I am aware of pedigree collapse , I just thought that would make the tree smaller, not larger! I won't worry about it now.

Gordon Collett

It makes your tree smaller in the sense that you have few ancestors but it doesn't necessarily make a chart any smaller. That depends on how you want the chart to look if given a choice.

I use Reunion for my desktop genealogy program. It has several options for "pruning" the chart when printing a pedigree. On of these is to not print duplicates:

Here is a portion of the above fan chart in a standard pedigree view as a full chart:

and as a "pruned" chart:

The pruned version at first glance makes it look like Ingeborg is a end-of-line individual, until one notices the double asterisks. Family Tree doesn't have any options like this when printing or viewing trees so you always get the full, un-pruned variety.

Gordon Collett

I've seen charts that do something like this:

but depending on the extent of pedigree collapse in a family, this can get pretty messy and hard to read.