Accuracy of records
The records on this site were able to fill in my paternal and maternal ancestors back to the 1600's immediately. I have only visited twice and though the names at a glance seem to be accurate, I have already found many details that aren't. I managed to get the powers that be to change my mother from dead to living. (Quite a shock to find her listed as "deceased"!) However, I don't know how to add my paternal grandfather's second wife and their 3 children (the people I knew as a child). One of my 3xgreat-grandfathers is listed as having 13 children. He had 15. I was able to add one, but the other is a twin listed as one child with an "aka" of his twin's name. I tried to add the last child born to another couple. He was adopted a short time after he was born as his mother died of complications from giving birth. I entered him with his birth name and put his adopted name as "aka", only to find at the end of the process I should have done it the other way around.
I have only spent a short time here, but feel at this rate, I could spend the last years of my life correcting things and never tell the stories I came here to document (memories from my grandmother (born in 1891) of her life and those of her parents' and grandparents' generations. I don't "do" social media nor have I joined internet communities, so am not good at these things. I am disheartened and wonder if I should just give up. Can someone help?
Best Answer
-
Edith,
We received your question regarding adding a second spouse and adding children.
We are attaching several knowledge articles for your review.
also
We are pleased that you have been this successful in such a short time and were able to change a deceased to living in this wonderful website.
0
Answers
-
Certainly do not give up. Family history is never ending! Once you have found one ancestor, there are two more to find. Do what you can and focus on what interests you most. This could be adding memories to individuals. These are often personal and cannot be easily, if at all, duplicated by someone else.
Yes - there are errors. Family Tree is a combination of historical records and information submitted by individuals. The latter may or may not be based on historical records, or, at least, a correct interpretation of them. This is the nature of Family Tree. The fact that it is one tree rather than lots of separate trees is a strength and a weakness. Others will make mistakes and sometimes stupid ones showing a lack of thought (parents younger than children!!!). This is not unique to Family Tree. You only need to look at trees submitted on other websites to see similar errors. But, over time, it will steadily improve. I have been using this since it began in 2012 and there have been numerous improvements over this period which reduce risk of errors (but, unfortunately, unlikely to ever eliminate them). The capacity to attach source records such as censuses is one example. Also, it is important to try to explain your reasons for making changes to reduce the chance of others coming along and making further, incorrect, changes.
Because it is one tree, inevitably it takes practice to become familiar with how it works with all the different mechanics involved.
Keep at it! It will be worth it.
2 -
Hi@EdithBehm ,
Thank you for your contributions to Family Tree and we hope you will be successful in adding your memories of your grandparents. FamilySearch.org is different than most other genealogy sites because we have a main public tree to which everyone adds family information and connects to the research of other distant relatives. Sometimes other relatives add incorrect information because they are not as familiar as you are to your branch. Please don’t be discouraged. We believe that the more people there are working on Family Tree, the faster it will grow-and the more accurate it will be…eventually. We can learn the details of other branches of the family from distant cousins and they can learn from us.
We encourage collaboration between distant relatives to both benefit from other’s information and to clarify details that you may better understand in your branch of the family. FamilySearch has created tools to help with collaboration. One tool is FamilySearch Messages that helps you communicate with people who have contributed information to the Family Tree. When you find facts that are incorrect in the “Vitals” section of a Person Page, you can message the person who entered the information to clarify. Under the word, “Vitals” are the words “Detail View” which is a toggle switch. Click on Detail View if it is grey and it will change to green and you will be able to see the name of the person who last changed the vital information. Click on the name and you can either “Send a Message” to them through the FamilySearch messages or if they have shared their email, you can email them directly. Contact information for contributors also can be found on the “Latest Changes” page found on the grey column to the right.
If the person responds to your message, you can find their answers at your notification icon which is in the upper right part of your page next to your name when you are signed in. It looks like a conversation square with lines to the left of your name. When someone has sent you a message, you will see a red mark on the icon. Here is a link to an article in our Help Center that describes about how to use FamilySearch Messages.
Another tool is the “follow” tool if you would like to be notified if someone changes the details on some of your closer relatives. On the Details of a Person Page, you can find a star with the word Follow. It is located to the right of the person’s name and ID number, above the colored line. You can click on the star and then you can be notified if anyone has changed information on that page. Here is a link to the article from our Help Center about the follow tool.
An additional tool can be found in the “Collaborate” tab on the Person Page. This is where one can add Notes and Discussions to elaborate on family information. Here is a third link to an article which lists details on Notes, Discussions and other collaboration tools.
Often people enter limited information if they are distant relatives. Once we explain that we have personal history with those ancestors, they usually are pleased to have better, more accurate information. We hope you will consider continuing your efforts in FamilySearch.org. Your more personal, valid and sourced information will improve the quality of our tree. Thank you for your participation.
0
