Best couple choice - Alswede

Jenealogy

 I have two possible sets of parents with the father's name of Johann Ernst Schäper for a child named Marie Louise Schaeper (born 1763), with brothers born in 1758 and 1760.

One possible father was born in 1740 and the other 1723. Without finding the burial records for any of the above, yet, would you say that the father born in 1740 is unlikely because he would have been quite young at the time of marriage, while the other possibility would have been approximately the right age? I will be looking for the marriage and other children of both possible fathers.

Thank you.

Gail Swihart Watson

I love this question. I hope it gets lots of heated debate, because it is such an important question.

My approach here in FamilySearch is to leave both sets of parents. My husband has a more recent set of confused parents of an ancestor than in your case, all 4 individuals were born the early 1800s. I have been able to use DNA in Ancestry as the basis to "chose" which parents I prefer. It is not proof, it is only evidence. These 4 individuals were all born in Europe but went to what is now Ukraine and are of German ethnicity, so there are not lots of records, hence the dispute.

In your case DNA could still give you things to think about in Ancestry. I can elaborate if you desire and have done a DNA test and have a type of account there to build trees. But here in FamilySearch my preference is to leave both sets of parents attached and put notes in the collaboration area to explain my thinking. In checking just now, no one has removed any of the parents or even worked on any of them in 2023. In Ancestry I've received messages from 2 people ready to go head to head on which couple is correct.

So, hijacking your question a bit, but in the same vein, a similar situation tends to come up for which DNA is no value at all. Multiple brothers each have a son named after the brothers' father producing multiple cousins with the same name. This has also been a repeated thorn in my side and I suspect fairly common for others as well. I am working on 3 cousins named Robert right now, all born between 1830 and 1833 in the same town. I tend to be very, very cautious here as well. When I have hard evidence that a single Robert belongs with a specific couple, I will create a brand new instance of a child Robert rather than try to disentangle the evidence of an existing person page. Why? I don't like removing sources, and I consider merge a premature move at this point because then it becomes much harder to see what the problem is. All evidence for "a" Robert needs to stay visible. I want to leave a trail for what I am doing rather than blast through other peoples' work destroying hours of effort. I will go to the confused children Robert and add to the collaboration notes and comments with specifics about sources indicating which belong to the Robert of a different family. Sorting this out is very tedious work, but must be done. When I get all the Roberts sorted out with their proper families, THEN merging becomes more reasonable and I will probably message all the contributors prior to doing that.

Bottom line: I believe it's all about providing - and leaving - evidence for others that follow. Stack that evidence up but don't destroy anything else. Put comments. You may never have sufficient evidence for the identity of the correct parents.

Jenealogy

Gail -- Thank you for your comments and analysis. I do like your approach of creating "another instance" of the person whose parents are not definite. It makes sense to leave sources and add collaboration notes, so that others can make their own decisions.

Your discussion about several persons with the same name in the same vicinity, including brothers and cousins, for instance, certainly gives one pause . . .