PART 4
In Family Tree, the pedigrees that are in Ancestral File, Pedigree Resource File, Temple and other patron submitted sources will be converted into Family Tree sources and attached to the ancestor. Any conclusions originally contributed by one of these entries in new FamilySearch will then be fully editable and removable. So if there was erroneous data about your family in the Ancestral File that got downloaded several times and uploaded to Pedigree Resource File and the whole mess is now in new FamilySearch, those things will be fixable! There are many relationships that are not genealogically sound but were contributed by these sources that will now be removable. Ancestral File and Pedigree Resource File are not good sources but are a good clue as to potential relationships and names. There are some Pedigree Resource File entries that may have good source citations in them that would be great to promote into Family Tree sources on the ancestor. It isn’t all bad, but it should be treated as one opinion and not the gospel truth. You should try to find actual records that can prove or disprove the information to verify that you are climbing the correct family tree.
Family Tree will also provide a “not-a-match” feature that will allow a user to state that two ancestors or an ancestor and a record are not matches. This will prevent the system from suggesting that these are possible duplicates. Just because Donald McDonald and Mary Campbell have the same names and were in the same town as the other Donald McDonald and Mary Campbell does not mean they were the same people, even if they did both name their kids Angus, Ranald, Catherine and Archibald! It will be really nice to be able to source that fact, mark them as not a match and show each family as separate entities on a census record linked to the families in the Family Tree.
Continued next week ….
For more information, contact Shanna Jones shannasjones@msn.com or (435) 628-4900.