Scotland. Merged family:KCGB-SB6 James Currie & Agnes Gibson KZC35BD. Children born in 2 counties.

Hello BezoldMarlaEllen

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Welcome to the FamilySearch community, and thank you for your question regarding Merging.

How do I decide if two records in Family Tree are about the same person?

• Things to keep in mind when merging two individuals in FamilySearch
•  1) FamilySearch does show "Possible Duplicates" - the emphasis there should be "POSSIBLE"
• Don't assume they are the same. and don't merge them without doing "your homework" to know they are the same and the remaining information is correct as can be known.
•  2) Realize that FamilySearch Family Tree is a collaborative database.
• Anything you do will impact what other people do and see.
• Anything you do potentially can impact for good or for bad-0 the work other people are doing.
•  3) Be patient and analyze the records well before merging. Don't be too much in a hurry and don't be careless when merging records.
• you can easily wreak havoc on the work of others in doing a bad merge.
•  4) Realize that you aren't just merging what you perceive as duplicate individuals - but rather you are potentially merging two families together. 
• Consider the following scenario. John Doe (1800-1850) is recorded twice in FamilySearch. But, one record has one set of parents and children 
• and the other record has a different set of parents and children. If you merge these two records you will have one person with all the previous children and two sets pf parents. Consider the real possibility that even though the birth/death dates may be an exact match - that actually someone before you has attributed the wrong birth date to one of the duplicates (because they were confused about the persons identity)
• Be very cautious of merging two duplicates where both sets of records have (different) spouse or children.
•  5) Just because two people have the same birth and/or death date doesn't always mean that they should be merged (due to what was discussed in the previous item)
•  6) When you have conflicting vital information between the two records - do a little bit of research as to what information appears to be more accurate.
•  7) When you have two records you need to merge - do you understand the difference of whether you start with record 1 and merge with record 2 
• or start with record 2 and merge with record 1. Have you noted the "switch position" option in the merge process? Do you understand the impact of switching position"? Do you understand how to choose the remaining correct info when there is correct info from both sides of the two records?  
• If you don't understand this - consider having someone more experienced to do the merge.
•  8) Make contact with others researching the family (past submitters of info to these two records) and see if they agree with you on how the records should be merged.
•  9) In many cases duplicates exist because one record is still marked as a "living individual" and one record has a death date (is deceased)
• FamilySearch keeps track of records for living persons in a totally different way that it does deceased persons. If you see a child of a set of parents duplicates - but one is marked as living and one is marked as deceased (and if you know the death information is correct) then first update the death information on the one that is missing - and then you will be able to merge the two (FamilySearch does not allow merging of live with deceased persons)
•  10) In some cases it appears that FamilySearch has a different set of parent records for each child in the (same actual) family.
• This may occur for records that were created decades ago where family relationships were not all tied together before the temple work is done.
• Usually this type of scenario will be straight forward - but tedious in the merge process.
•  11) In some cases two different people with the same name - but married to two different spouses and were actually two different people - have been mistakenly merged together. if a good amount of time has gone by (and other people have since made other changes) backing out the merge may not be easy or possible. 
• Rather you may be forced to create a new record for one of the pre-merged persons.
•  12) Don't just assume that two children by the same name and same set of parents were actually the same person.
• Especially in earlier centuries - child mortality was much higher - and it was not uncommon to find multiple children given the same name - having siblings with the same name who had died before they were born.
•  13) Be much more cautious of merging people with common names (such as John Smith) that could really be two different people - as compared to people with unusual names (such as Herbert Simone).
•  14) Its good to know how to do a merge - if you have never done one before.  But start out with very straightforward merges.
• Straight forward merges could include:
• a) duplicate children where one is marked as deceased and one as living.
• b) duplicates where one of the records is not hooked to any parent or child. (an "orphan record") - but where dates or other info make it obvious they are the same person.
• c) duplicates both hooked to the same exact set of parents but no children or spouse involved for one or both of the duplicate records.
• 15) Don't just focus on the two records being merged. Before and after the merge - look at all the interconnected relationships and see if they need merging also.
• but don't do a complex merge like this without analyzing all the needed merges ahead of time. Write down the FamilySearch identifiers (ID's) ahead of time for all the people involved. 
• 16) Don't assume just because two people have the same name, same birth year and same spouse first name - that they must be the same person. Way too many people have wreaked havoc on a set of data - because of this miss-assumption.

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