Monday, November 12, 2012

Fixing My Folks in FamilySearch Family Tree - the Plan

I've been adding content to the FamilySearch Family Tree since February 2012 when I gained access to it, but have not devoted a lot of time to it.  I tried to add content back through my second or third great-grandparents using the RootsMagic interface with the FamilySearch Family Tree.

I need to go several more generations back adding persons, adding dates and places, adding sources, and correcting potential errors in the current tree.

I wondered how much work this would be, so I clicked through my part of the FamilySearch Family Tree to see if there are obvious errors past my second great-grandparents.  There seem to be plenty of differences between my research and somebody else's in the Family Tree!  Here are the screen shots of the Tree going back to my 4th great-grandparents (one for each of my second great-grands):

1)  The Seaver-Smith second great-grandparent branch:


I have performed significant "surgery" on the Seaver part of the tree already.  The names and years in the third-and fourth-great-grandparents are correct, except for the wife of Thomas Dill - she should be Hannah Horton.  And I now have birth-death years for that family.

2)  The Hildreth-Newton second great-grandparent branch:


I see two errors in the 4th great-grandparent generation that will require major surgery and discussion:

*  Zachariah Hildreth's (1783-1857) parents are Zachariah Hildreth and Elizabeth Keyes (not Abigail Hart, who was a second wife to the father Zachariah).
*  Hannah Sawtell's (1789-1857) parents should be Josiah Sawtell and Hannah Smith, not Simeon Sawtell and Abigail Cory.

3)  The Richman-Rich second great-grandparent branch:


The Tree has parents for John Richman (1788-1867) that I don't have - the Tree says they are John Richman and Jane Child.  I don't have that information, and I will be really interested to see if there is supporting information for that family.  I have parents for Rebecca Hill also that can be added.

4)  The White-Oatley second great-grandparent branch:


The name "Mary" Champlin (1797-1863) married to Jonathan Oatley (1790-1872) is wrong - it should be Amy Champlin, but it has Amy's parents listed.  Some surgery is necessary here.

5)  The Carringer-Spangler second great-grandparent branch:


In this branch, I have parents for both Sarah Feather and Elizabeth King, so I can add those people fairly easily (until I find duplicates!).

6)  The Lamphear Smith-Vaux second great-grandparent branch:


The Smith Lamphear-Vaux branch looks pretty good - since I don't know Devier Lamphear Smith's birth parents because he was adopted.

7)  The Auble-Knapp second great-grandparent branch:


The Auble-Knapp branch looks pretty good so far.

8)  The Kemp-Sovereen second-great-grandparent branch:


The Kemp-Sovereen branch looks pretty good too.  I can add a surname for Sarah, wife of John Putman.

What to do next:

So there is some major surgery, and probably quite a bit of minor surgery, to be done on my little part of the tree, based on the evidence that I've gleaned over the years from record collections, and the conclusions I've drawn from that evidence.  For each person (and family members) in the tree, I need to:

*  Merge duplicate persons when necessary.
*  Remove erroneous relationships.
*  Clean up duplicate Events for persons.
*  Add Events and Relationships as required (I'll use RootsMagic for this)
*  Add source documents that support my conclusions  (I can use FamilySearch Source Box, but need to be able to add scanned records too - I can't do this now).
*  Add source citations for Events that support my conclusions (this is difficult to do now... I want an automated process using software programs)
*  Add discussion of conclusions when necessary (I need to be disciplined with this)
*  Add research notes for the persons (not yet implemented; I want an automated process to do this)

This may take awhile just for my ancestral families back to the 4th-great-grandparents!  For many of these lines, I have data back to the late 16th century.  I think this will take me awhile just to do my own ancestral families...I'm not about to do anybody else's in the near future!

 How does your little branch on the FamilySearch Family Tree look?  Are all of your ancestors correct back to the 4th great-grandparents?  And are the collateral lines correct?

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/11/fixing-my-folks-in-familysearch-family.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

3 comments:

Lee Drew said...

You are undertaking big and extremely valuable project Randy. Like you, I've been working on my own ancestral info in FamilySearch Tree and for a while.

It is good having sources attached to the records to finally silence some of folks who have historically argued over something they copied from in Internet that had no sources and they assumed was the gold standard for accuracy.

I too am using the Source Box along with creating sources for the source images and records not on FamilySearch.

I use Legacy as the interface between my data and the FS data, which also works very well.

We all have a lot of work ahead of us insuring the sourcing on FamilySearch Tree is right but once it is cleaned up, we'll all have a wonderful resource that will always be securely backed up.

Magda said...

I will defintely be folowing this series about you PLAN for Family Search Tree . Finally figured out out how to delete a father who somehow became the husband of all his daughter-in-laws !! This is using Roots Magic as my interface liaison to Family Tree . Sometimes it makes me cry how bizarre it is ( yet it looks like it could work like a charm ).

Magda

Jilline said...

The way I add scanned records is by adding my images to Flickr and then copy and paste the URL for each image into the source info.