Who are the ghost parents?
Victoriana del Carmen Fonseca Arias K6P5-2X7
has a set of ghost parents. Who are they?
I have been helping a friend and we started dismantling a bunch of incorrect merges and I thought we had found the original parents but the system still shows a ghost set.
Thank you for your help
Answers
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There are two profiles for her father, and her mother is shown as married to both profiles.
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Should be just a matter of examining the two "father" profiles and determining if they are the same person (probably) and if so, just merge them and correct the name if necessary, and the second set of parents will disappear.
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The first step is to note the date of the child to parent sealing. This was in 1998. Therefore, the entry that includes the ghost parents (who do not exist at all on the profile page) will have been an import into the original build of the Family Tree database. It will have a creation date in the spring of 2012.
Starting with the current profile for Victoriana I see that it has that date. Looking at the information imported in 2012, you can see that this profile did not have any parents. They were not added until 2014.
So you do need to look at all her merges. The current profile has three merges that were done in 2019, 2020, and 2020.
Going to the oldest one and looking at the change log for https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/9Z76-5T5 , that profile did not have any other merges. It was also imported into Family Tree in 2012. It also has no parents and, therefore, not the source of the ghost parents.
Going to the second merge and looking at the change log for https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/93DQ-42P , again it was imported in 2012. The very first entry in the change log, the one at the very bottom show a set of parents:
The mother here was merged into another profile which was merged into another profile which was merged into Victoriana's current mother. However, the father here, Jose, was never merged and ended up like this:
Assuming the child to parent sealing was done for the relationship shown in the change log in the screen shot above, splitting off Jose KCPX-RDQ instead of merging him with Victoriana's current father would have created the ghost parents.
However, this second Carmen has a set of five other merges. You need to check the change log for each of them to see if there are additions parents that were removed, intentionally or accidentally, that could have been the parents she was originally sealed to.
Looking at the third merge into the current Victoriana which brought in https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/99V2-MQP , that Carmen did not have any parents in her change log.
So you do have more work to do looking at the merges for second Carmen above to see if any of them had parents could be the ghost parents.
But you definitely need to deal with Jose. You may need to reverse the changes and get him back with his original wife, (by restoring her profile) and children and then deciding if any of the merges that involved that family were correct or if they should never have been merged and need a full restoration and clean of of their original profiles.
(This is a little rushed. Sorry for any typos. I have to get to the grocery store if I'm making dinner tonight and don't have time the thoroughly proof-read.)
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Almost forgot that fourth merge into Victoriana that was done yesterday. the profile merged in, https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/changelog/GWXN-613 , was created in 2020 and has no other merges so is definitely not the source of the ghost parents.
So going back to the second merge for Victoriana, the one in which https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/93DQ-42P was deleted, here is her list of merges:
Starting from the bottom and numbering upwards to evaluate each deleted profile:
1: created 2016, no parents, no other merges, so can ignore as far as the ghost parent question.
2: imported 2012, no parents, no other merges, so can ignore as far as the ghost parent question.
3: imported 2012 with parents. Her original parents were detached from her in 2013 so this could be the source of the ghost parents. A new father was added and her original mother put back. Then her original mother deleted and a new mother was added. Then that set of parents were deleted. But all those changes after 2013 would not have caused ghost parents. Only loosing her original parents could have.
4: Imported 2012, no parents, no other merges, so can ignore as far as the ghost parent question.
5: Imported 2012, no parents, no other merges, so can ignore as far as the ghost parent question.
6: Imported 2012, no parents, no other merges, so can ignore as far as the ghost parent question.
So you actually have just two options for the ghost parents. These would be the original parents for 9QCG-B43 and the original parents for 93DQ-42P.
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Taking the next step. Checking the parents of deleted profile 9QCG-B43, her original mother was through a series of merges finally merged into Victoriana's current mother. However her original father was merged into the Jose Maria Fonseca KCPX-RDQ that I show above with no spouse and two children. If appropriate, merging that Jose into Victoriana's current father should fix the ghost parent problem.
If not appropriate to merge him, then you may need to continue to undo all of the merges of the various Carmens and figure out which are Victoriana and which are not and get everyone back to their original parents.
Good Luck!
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@Gordon Collett - re "ghost parents (who do not exist at all on the profile page)"
I may regret asking this but what are "ghost parents"? Especially ones not visible on the profiles? I ask as a non Church member who would prefer not to mess up LDS data that I can't see but feel that it's going to happen sooner or later, so I'd prefer to have a vague understanding of any complaints (that I presumably can't do anything about).
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"Ghost Parents" is the somewhat silly and completely unofficial term that was coined by some user on this board and taken into general use for the situation in which temple ordinance work has been done based on a parent-child relationship in Family Tree and that relationship was later deleted. Since the child was removed from the parents, there is no sign of those parents on the profile page. A notice appears on the ordinance page referring to the deleted relationship but with no clue as to who the parents were. You have to dig through the Change Log to find them. The user that started this discussion has corrected Victoriana's page so I don't have the exact wording in front of me.
Sometimes the notice is completely appropriate because additional research has shown that the parents were incorrect. But most of the time the situation arises due to incorrect merges or because duplicate correct parent-child relationships were deleted instead of merged.
Avoiding ghost parents is why I am such an advocate for never deleting correct parent-child relationship, even ones where one parent is missing, but instead always merging them even if merging takes a few more steps.
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I went into the beta site and check Victoriana's record to find the notice. This is what appears on the ordinance tab:
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@Gordon Collett - thanks for that. I have often wondered how ordinances were kept in step with FS FamilyTree. The answer would appear to be that there are occasions when they can't be in step. For instance, my 5G Windsor GPs from Cheshire were once merged with similarly named couples from Devon, Kent and Lincolnshire - for anyone unfamiliar with GB Geography that's something like the north-west of England over to the east coast, south-east and south-west.
I did wonder what would have happened if anyone had sealed(?) the Devonian children (say) to the Cheshire parents before I demerged the respective families. Sounds like you have confirmed the potential for shenanigans… Oh well, nothing that I can do about it!
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