Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Attaching Historical Records to Entire Families in FamilySearch Family Tree - Part 2: A Significant Problem

I wrote Attaching Historical Records to Entire Families in FamilySearch Family Tree - Part 1  yesterday showing how I was able to attach a 1900 U.S. Census record to the members of one family in the FamilySearch Family Tree using a new feature.  

Using the same ancestor, Sarah G. (Knapp) Auble (1818-????), I continued attaching the historical records found for Sarah (Knapp) Auble for the 1880 U.S. Census using the same process.

When I tried to add the 1870 U.S. Census record to all members of the family, I had a major problem.  I was able to attach the record to Sarah (Knapp) Auble, but was not able to attach the record to other family members.

Here is the problem in pictures:

1)  After doing the search for Sarah Auble, I found the 1870 U.S. Census record:


As you can see, there are other Auble family members with Sarah - her husband (Daniel, but it's really David, an enumerator error), and five children (Mary, Charles, Kate, Anna and Cora).  I should be able to attach this record to all of those family members using the process described yesterday.

2)  On the screen above, I clicked on the blue "Attach to Family Tree" button on the right-hand side of the screen above, and picked Sarah Knapp from the list of persons, and was successful to attach the record to Sarah.

However, I was not offered the option to attach the record to the other family members - there was no "Attached Successfully" window offered with the opportunity to "Review" the other persons in the family.

I went back to the census record, and now Sarah's Record Summary has a "Review Attachment" link in the upper right-hand corner under "Sources:"


3)  I clicked on the "Review Attachments" link and saw the "Attach Historical Records to Family Tree" screen:


The screen above shows that this record is attached to Sarah, and to her son Charles (because I had done that previously).  There is no "Attach" link for the other family members for some reason.

4)  In order to add this historical record to each person in the family, I had to go back to the census Record Summary and click on each family member.  I also need to determine the Family Tree ID number for some of the persons because the names didn't match exactly, or they weren't in the "Does This Record Match?" list.  I found the FSFT ID number for David Auble, entered it into the form, and attached the 1870 U.S. Census record to David Auble (Sarah's husband) and now the "Attach Historical Records to Family Tree" screen looks like this:


Apparently, I have to do this for each family member in the 1870 U.S. Census Record Summary.

5)  The same thing happened for the 1860 U.S. Census record and the 1850 U.S. Census record - I had to click on each family member in order to add the record to each family member rather than just clicking an "Attach" link and then an "Attach" button to perform the operation.

Here is the "Attach Historical Records to Family Tree for Sarah (Knapp) Auble in the 1950 U.s. Census before I did the rest of the family members:


As you can see, there are no "Attach" links to attach this record to each family member in the record (in this case, I had already attached the record to son Charles Auble).  After I created the screen above, I attached the 1850 U.S. census record to David, William and Frances.

6)  So why did this happen?  It is evident to me that the 1850, 1860 and 1870 census records were indexed as family units - the family members are listed on the Record Summaries.  Why doesn't the "Attach Historical Records ..." to all family members in the record not work?

I don't know what other Historical Record Collections that this feature doesn't work for.  I know that it works for the U.S. Census records from 1880 to 1940.  What about Canadian and England/Wales Census records?  Does it work there?

7)  I will show how these historical records show up in the FamilySearch Family Tree in the next post.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/04/attaching-historical-records-to-entire_22.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver




2 comments:

Candace said...

This probably happened because those earlier censuses don't give relationships. Ancestry does the same thing.436 82366859

Geolover said...

Candace is right. The record must identify immediate family relationships, must be indexed as such on FamilySearch and must be set up as such in FS-FamilyTree.

While pre-1880 US Census enumerations do list household members, they do not specify relationships. You may conclude the nature of the relationships from other records, but they are not so identified in the actual enumerations.