Issue 19.13
Part 2
It is time to look at your family tree. https://familysearch.org/tree/ Because it is a consolidation of multiple record repositories, there are many data issues. The best practices can better help you successfully navigate the Family Tree. First, learn how to use the program. Click on Help in the upper right hand corner of the webpage and on the Ask a Question page, under Family Tree, click on See all Family Tree training materials (manuals, videos, etc.) This will give you a good, basic understanding of the program and what it can do.
One of the most wanted features of Family Tree is the ability to fix bad relationships. Relationships can be deleted. Just like with adding or editing relationship information, look for the Edit Couple or Edit Relationships link. Delete is in the tool box. Child to parent relationships have an extra feature. You can remove one parent from the relationship or you can actually change it to the right person. Go into Edit Relationship for a child, click the parent you want to remove or change and look for the options: Remove | Change | Close. This comes in handy if you have a pedigree that looks blank on one half. You may have one relationship to the father and one relationship to the mother, but the two of them are not linked to put the three together. Editing the relationships can solve this.
The ability to delete a person is a feature that is coming soon. Family Tree has introduced merging. This is very different from combining in new FamilySearch. No more oversized records that won’t combine or even load because they are way too big. Records must be reviewed one at a time but you can specify Not a Match to indicate that two records are not the same person. My great-great grandmother Catherine Campbell did have a sister named Catherine Campbell so I can mark them as “Not a Match” and this match will not be shown again. Looking for duplicates is in the tool box in a person’s details.
While reviewing a match, you see the records side by side. Each piece of information is considered separately. Add data that the first record is missing, replace with more correct or complete data, or reject the data. When you are done the duplicate record will be deleted and you will be left with one record.
Continued next week…..
For more information, contact Shanna S. Jones shannasjones@msn.com (435) 628-4900.