The mystery of Peder Hansen (9NK8-BJ3)
Peder was born in 1829 and died in 1854. He and his wife Karen (KWJZ-JCP) were the parents of two daughters, both of whom also died in 1854. After Peder's death, his wife married Peder's brother Jens (KWNX-56Y).
Jens was a polygamist, and had many wives. The problem is that many times over the last NINE years Jens' wives, and a few of their children, have been added to Peder's page.
Frequently the marriage dates (the date the wife married Jens), or the birth dates of the "children" occurred AFTER Peder's death.
When I find these "marriages" and then fix them, I sometimes write to the person who made the change to explain Peder's timeline and family. Frequently I am "Unable to message this user." On two recent occasions, when I have heard back, the responses were:
1- "Truthfully, if something was added by me I have no idea how. I just looked up names and didn't try to add or remove anything. This is my second day on here. Sorry."
2- "This is —-’s daughter. He does not use family search. I just noticed he had a notification on his app. He doesn’t even know how to use it so i think you have the wrong person."
So, my question is how can this be? How do these incorrect relationships get created by people who claim to not have created to create them?
KariM
Answers
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@KariM this sort of thing is so frustrating ....
If you are 'unable to message this user', they may be minors (which doesn't actually help, I know).
Have you tried putting an alert on the page to warn people off?
I am wondering if they are accessing FT via RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, or some other program that interfaces automatically with FS. Or maybe they didn't understand the single collaborative ethos of the Tree and thought they were working on something private to them.
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FYI, Family Tree Maker does not interface with the FamilySearch tree in that way. Users can download from the FS tree via Family Tree Maker, but it does not upload to the FS tree.
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@KariM , @MandyShaw1 , @Áine.ní.Donnghaile , I really wish the search engine here worked better. I have spent the last ten minutes looking for a conversation here and cannot find it. The last post on it was entered a couple of days ago. It was about a similar situation where incorrect family or family relations kept being added to a tree.
The final post was from a moderator who stated that the problem had been discovered and was that whenever a new user comes to FamilyTree, creates an account, and puts a church membership record number in his or her account, that membership record, which is connected to the membership records for their family, is used to pre-populate their family lines. If those membership records contain inaccurate information (which has been corrected in FamilyTree) the inaccurate information is put back into Family Tree.
This process is automatic and would explain both of the statements from those two users quoted above. They created new accounts and did nothing else. The program took care of the rest. Apparently the only way to stop this from happening again is to get the membership records corrected so that the next relative to open a FamilySearch account doesn't pull all that information in again.
If someone remembers the title to that other conversation or can find it some other way and find the name of the moderator who explained things, then that moderator could be asked how to get membership records corrected. He did not, as I recall, explain that.
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@Gordon Collett I know the thread you want because I was part of it.
It's here:2 -
@Gordon Collett Specifically, I think you are looking for this comment, which explains how inaccuracies in Church membership records can cause errors in Family Tree when descendants of those members create accounts. Although the particular situation in that thread had a happy ending because @Sam Sulser reported that some data administrator had fixed those particular membership records, she did not say that the more general problem has been fixed yet.
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So how can @KariM get the membership records for her family fixed?
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@Gordon Collett When any of you has an issue, it can be reported through any of the support channels, including this one. Since @KariM posted here in the community, we will make sure it gets addressed as we are one of those support channels. Just know, they don't always get the same resolution. It depends on what is wrong and what can be done about it. But you can consider it reported!
Sam 😊
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Thanks all for your input. Hope springs eternal that this issue can be resolved.
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