THE INDEX IS WRONG, NOW WE CAN EDIT IT

The FamilySearch Blog has posted an update on editing names on indexed records.

Editing Names on Indexed Records—FamilySearch Update

"Everyone can agree that indexed records make life easier. Instead of having to scroll through image after image to find information about your ancestor, you can use an index of searchable information to quickly find the person you’re looking for.

Unfortunately, indexing errors sometimes make the search process more difficult. Hard-to-read handwriting, damaged records, language barriers, and simple human error mean that no index is guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate. If you add the fact that sometimes the original documents had errors in the first place, it’s easy to see how complications seep in. Errors in the records or index can render the index useless for finding certain ancestors and can even cause a researcher to skip over important records. 

In the past, if you came across an incorrect index on FamilySearch, there wasn’t much you could do about it besides note down the error and perhaps grumble about it to yourself. That’s all changed now! With the newest update on FamilySearch, you can make corrections to names in the index—with the ability to edit other details in the entries coming soon. By editing the index, you can help other people locate records—and ancestors—they might not have been able to find otherwise.

When to Edit an Index

The purpose of editing an index is to enable other researchers to find their ancestors more effectively. There are two main scenarios where edits could be helpful—when records were indexed incorrectly and when the original records contained incorrect information.

How to Edit

The process of editing an index entry is simple. After searching for an ancestor on FamilySearch, look through the search results for a promising record, and click your ancestor’s name. A box will pop up with the indexed information on the left and the record document on the right. For indexes that are editable, you will notice the word Edit next to your ancestor’s name.

Keep in mind that your edits do not override the information already on FamilySearch. Instead, you add new information. The old indexed information remains. Now your change and the original information are both searchable. There could even be several edits to the same record, helping others to find their ancestors more easily. Please edit carefully, however, since multiple edits can also muddy the waters!

Now that you know how editing index entries works, it’s time to give it a try. Go to FamilySearch, and search for your ancestors. When you find incorrect information in the index, take a moment to carefully and thoughtfully make corrections. Your actions can help others have success in finding their ancestors.

SYMBOLS - CLUBS, SOCIETIES AND FRATERNITIES

Billion Graves has posted a 3-part series on symbols on graves. Part one is printed and is on the file Part one covers the following. Google Billion Graves to find out more and see parts 2 & 3.

"This is the first post of a three-part blog series to explore the following symbols of clubs, societies, and fraternities at the cemetery.  

• American Legion
• Benevolent Protective Order of Elks
• Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts
• Freemasons
• Order of the Eastern Star
• Fraternal Order of the Eagles
• Independent Order of Odd Fellows
• Knights of Columbus
• Knights of Pythias
• Knights of the Maccabees
• Loyal Order of the Moose
• Salvation Army
• Shriners
• Woodmen of the World

We’ll start off with the first five . . . American Legion, Elks, Scouts, Eastern Star, and Freemasons."

EMIGRATION / IMIGRATION - THE WHY'S AND WHEREFORES

The Riverton FamilySearch Library "Tip of the Week" gives a good insight of both why people emigrated and where the immigrated to as well as the records of their travels.

Emigration and Immigration Stories

Simply put, Emigration is when a person leaves a country.  Immigration is entering a country.  Many stories affecting our ancestors can be found, along with the reasons that influenced their decisions.  Get to know your ancestors better by turning your hearts to them, and you may discover their wonderful and faith promoting stories.

Factors that Influenced Emigration - (Records of those leaving a country)

·      Political.

§  Military conscription (military draft).

§  War (danger, damage, casualties, food and other supply shortages.

§  Displacement and expulsion.

§  Political freedom.

·      Religious Factors.

§  Religious persecution.

§  Religious conversions.

·      Natural disasters - Earthquakes, Volcanos, Floods, Famine, Epidemics for example.

·      Economic hardships

§  Increased population or lack of available land (for the common folk).

§  Lack of work and poor wages.

§  Living conditions.

§  Education.

·      Friends and Family Factors.

§  Family members who emigrated, leaving behind loved ones.

§  Friends who emigrated, leaving behind very good friends.

Immigration to North America - (Records of those entering a country)

·      Less than one million arrived.

§  1600’s to 1700’s.

§  Mostly from England, Scotland, France, Germany and Holland.

§  Some were freed convicts; some were indentured servants.

·      Over fifteen million arrived.

§  1800’s to 1860.

§  Mostly from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Holland, Germany, Brittan.

·      Over twenty million arrived.

§  1880 to 1920.

§  Mostly from Russia, Poland, Romania, Austria, Italy.

·      Places to look to list a few.

§  FamilySearch.

§  Ancestry.

§  Find My Past.

§  Brigham Young University’s Immigrant Ancestors Project.

§  Ellis Island Family Histories.

WHAT HAPPENS TO FAMILYSEARCH "MEMORIES" WHEN A PERSON DIES?

 Is there anyone here that KNOWS what happens to "Memories" information once that person is deceased? This was a recent post on the FamilySearch Consultant Blog. 

 CHECK OUT THE BOLD COMMENTS.

"I would like to leave a fair amount of my personal history, as a document, in "Memories" on my "Person" page (along with photos, certificates, etc.). Obviously, that's in a separate private space while I'm still living, so no one can see my "Memories" page while I'm living. Some of that information I'm very glad to have left private during my lifetime, but once I'm dead, I have no problem with my children, grand children, and great grand children knowing more about dad/grandpa than they do now.

One answer I got is that when the ward clerk marks me as deceased in membership records, FamilySearch will pick that up and convert my FamilySearch "Person" page to a viewable record, and that others will have to do merging of the other private pages on me (such as my wife's tree with me as her spouse, and our children, with us as their parents, etc.).

Once a Church member is deceased, how is FamilySearch notified of the death, and then what happens to the private record that I personally created (not the ones created by my wife and children)? Will my entire private "Person" page, including the photo, document, audio, and stories sections be preserved from what I entered on the "Memories" section of my "Person" page?

IF NOT, is there any way for all that private information in my "Memories" section to become viewable to anyone after my death (which is what I prefer)?

Finally, if others have put photos, etc., in the "Memories" section of the "Person" page they created for me as a living person, what happens to those memories once all of the private versions of "me" are merged? Do they get lost, or is there a way for them to move with the merged data?

Also, how does this work for non-Church members trying to do the same thing, i.e. preserving memories permanently in the "Memories" section of their page?"

Sounds like there's a bit of  confusion. Here are some additional comments.

"I was able to speak to the Memories team leader! He told me that as of right now, we are unable to access private memories when they have not been shared or attached to a deceased person in the tree.

But hope is not lost! The team leader said that they are aware of the problem and working towards a solution! Until then, he mentioned a few things to consider:

1) Any album in the gallery can be shared, so a patron can share albums with another if they want to be sure others maintain access to their memories after they die. 

2) Also, any memory you “Like” will be bookmarked and placed in your gallery in the “My Likes” collection. 

3) The Memories team is presently working on a feature that lets patrons “Like” an album which will bookmark the album making it available in the gallery.

4) Currently the Memories Find feature does not find a memory unless it only contains tags of deceased individuals. In other words, any memory with living person tags, unattached person tags, or simply contains no tags, are not findable with today’s find feature. The Memories team is looking to change this so that more memories can be found for authenticated users. When a memory is found that contains a living person tag, it won’t show the person tag."

"so far, so good - even great! I realize FamilySearch is working on upgrading all sorts of things along with coming up with new ones, and that those take time - particularly programming that requires all sorts of protections when it involves private spaces vs. openly available records.

The one item that wasn't addressed is, what happens to my memories that I've put in my own Person page Memories section, if I die tomorrow? (Of course the answer to that will be useful for ALL FamilySearch users as well.) (1) If the ward clerk marks me "deceased," does that get transmitted to FamilySearch also for marking my ID number (the one associated with my account) deceased, or does a relative have to mark me deceased? And if they do, they'd be marking the private living version of me that THEY put in THEIR account, which would be separate from the "real" me with the PID that I created for myself when I first opened a FamilySearch account. What happens if my relatives happen to beat the clerk in marking me deceased (some clerks can be mighty slow in changing that status on records, sadly)? So question #1 is actually two parts - what happens to my memories if the clerk marks my membership record deceased, and what happens if my wife or children mark me deceased in THEIR private spaces where they've put me? And then how do all those memories merge together, particularly if the clerk is delinquent in changing my Church record? (2) Related to that is the object of my intention: I want to preserve my "Memories" for my posterity, but some of that should not become available until I'm dead, so I don't want it in an album now. Is it currently the case that those memories will be preserved in my own version of "me" (i.e. the PID created for me BY me when I opened my FamilySearch account - NOT the ones my wife or children have created on me in their accounts)? And if those memories that I've put in my memories section on my person page do NOT transfer forward to the new "deceased" version of me (the original ID number), is that in the works for solving in the reasonably near future (at my age, I don't buy green bananas, as they say hah hah!)?

Finally, I'm not certain I know what you mean by the fact that you can't access memories unless they're attached to a deceased person. Does that mean that the memories are indeed lost when a person becomes marked as deceased?!? I sure hope not! And I hope that's what you meant by a solution being in the works."

"I tested this out today.

My grandmother passed away 2 days ago. I just entered her death date and it made her private space profile into a public profile. I had a photo and a story attached to her, which both carried across to the public profile.

My sister in another town verified that she could see all the memories that I had created for grandma.

So the answer to part of your question is yes, memories carry across when someone adds a death date to their private space relative."

"Here are the answers (IN BOLD) to your above questions from one of our engineers. This is the best answer he has at the moment, so anything in more detail is probably not yet available.

1. Question #1 is actually two parts - what happens to my memories if the clerk marks my membership record deceased, and what happens if my wife or children mark me deceased in THEIR private spaces where they've put me? And then how do all those memories merge together, particularly if the clerk is delinquent in changing my Church record? So, prior to a clerk marking someone deceased, if I mark my father deceased, then my version of dad is deceased and viewable and if my sister does the same, then she or I would need to perform a merge to remove the duplicate and our memories would then be merged. If the clerk has not has not officially changed the status of our Father, then I believe there will still be a living version of dad out there. Once the clerk gets around to marking dad as deceased, then another merge would need to occur. 
2. Related to that is the object of my intention: I want to preserve my "Memories" for my posterity, but some of that should not become available until I'm dead, so I don't want it in an album now. Is it currently the case that those memories will be preserved in my own version of "me" (i.e. the PID created for me BY me when I opened my FamilySearch account - NOT the ones my wife or children have created on me in their accounts)? And if those memories that I've put in my memories section on my person page do NOT transfer forward to the new "deceased" version of me (the original ID number), is that in the works for solving in the reasonably near future (at my age, I don't buy green bananas, as they say hah hah!)?  The deceased version of you in the tree will show up as a duplicate to the other versions of you and will need to get merged. The memories that are attached to you are not lost upon a merge. Memories that are in your gallery that are not attached to you or anyone else, will be difficult to find until we come up with a solution."

DUPLICATE ENUMERATIONS

1870 US Enumerations of Indianapolis, New York City, and Philadelphia

Posted: 11 Aug 2019 07:23 AM PDT

Did you know there were “second enumerations” of Indianapolis, New York City, and Philadelphia in the 1870 US census? If your relative lived in one of these cities are their enumerations exactly the same?

Natural Children

Posted: 10 Aug 2019 10:54 AM PDT

If a person refers to someone else as their “natural child,” it usually means that the parents of the child were not married at the time the child was born.
Wills are one place where an individual can acknowledge a child as their “natural child.”

WHAT'S A NATURAL CHILD

THERE'S A NEW MESSAGE FOR YOU

The FamilySearch Blog caught our eye. That little red dot in the upper right hand corner of  you family tree is for messages. It's been expanded. The blog indicates that there are now sub-catagories -- CONVERSATIONS, DISCOVERIES, GENERAL, INDEXING & TEMPLE .

Conversations

While this feature has always been available
in the mailbox, it has been greatly improved. Here you can converse with other FamilySearch
users about records, dates, times, places, and whatever you would like. Many
people use this feature to work with their family on finding and adding sources
in the shared Family Tree.

Discoveries

This tab shows you messages from FamilySearch
about record hints and other findings that can enhance your work on Family
Tree. These messages are specific to you and can help you discover many new
things about your family!

General

These are messages about feature updates on the
FamilySearch site and other general subjects. If you are curious about what new
records have been added to FamilySearch or want to keep updated about what is
happening on the site, you will find those messages here.

Temple

Here you will see thank you messages, messages about reserved names being released, and other information relating to connecting your ancestors on both sides of the veil.

WE'RE WATCHING YOU

We are watching you! The watch function in your family tree is a great tool. First, it keeps track of any changes made to watched individuals. Second, it gives you the name of a COUSIN who has an interest in your tree. Plus, it gives you an east way to contact that cousin.

James Tanner, in his blog, Rejoice and be Exceeding Glad, has been doing a statistical study of changes on his tree. He has been tracking 302 people in his tree so see how many of the changes had sources attached. The results are REALLY EYE OPENING.

"My question was exactly how many of those ill-advised changes I was seeing weekly in the Family Tree were made without providing a source for the information added or removed. After weeks of tabulating the changes, the average settled on a surprising 87%. Yes, 87% of the changes were made without a supporting source. I decided at this point to add a commentary and suspend the review until sometime in the future if the changes continue to be a challenge.

The bulk of the changes observed were made to a very small number of people. In fact, of the 475 changes made to those on my Watch List during the weeks of my study, 310 of the consequential changes were made to only 11 people and one person had 156 consequential changes. Although I did not keep track of the corrections, my impression was that almost all of the unsupported consequential changes we corrected in a very short time. However, those individuals with most changes were mostly a disaster because the information on any given day could be inaccurate.

In all, during the time period of the study, there were 81 people with a combined total of 475 significant changes and 394 of those changes were unsupported by any mention of a source. The time involved for one person to check every single change would be overwhelming. The only thing that saved the data from ultimate destruction was that there were a number of people evidently watching these individuals and correcting the unsupported changes.

Unsupported, consequential changes made to the Family Tree are, in fact, a major issue with the future viability of the whole Family Tree project. I cannot see any way that I can measure how many new people were added to the Family Tree during the study period, but I can only assume that the new people are being added with about the same level of lack of supporting documentation."

IT'S A SCAN!

If you have a smart phone, you can scan. Portable scanners work Okay, but why bother if you can use your smart phone and get the same results. 

A recent article on the "Wirecutter" web site discusses scanning apps for your smart phone. He gives three opitons.

“This may seem shocking, but unless you’re an accountant or archivist, you probably don’t need a traditional scanner—today’s smartphone scanning apps are simply that good. After spending more than 35 hours researching 20 scanning apps and testing seven of them, we’ve determined that our favorite is the lean and efficient Adobe Scan (for Android and iOS). It’s dead simple to use, capable of beautiful scan quality, and equipped with excellent text-recognition capabilities. Best of all, it’s totally free—even for iPhone owners.”

ADOBE SCAN

Adobe Scan (for Android and iOS) is great at capturing the sort of documents life throws at you on a once-in-a-while basis—stuff like rebate forms, tax documents, and the occasional business card. It isn’t as complex or powerful as apps like CamScanner or our upgrade pick, Scanbot, and it can export only PDFs.

MICROSOFT LENS

"If you like the sound of Adobe Scan’s simplicity but spend a lot of time working in the Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft Office Lens (Android and iOS) is the way to go. Its user interface is similarly stripped down, but the output options include Word documents and PowerPoint slides in addition to PDFs. Its scans don’t look as clean as what you can get from Adobe Scan or Scanbot, and you may find its sharing options annoyingly limited. But its world-class text recognition almost makes up for those drawbacks."

SCANBOT

"Scanbot (Android and iOS) is a more full-featured app than Adobe Scan or Office Lens, offering stuff like custom folders for better organization, smart file naming, iCloud syncing, and automatic uploading to your choice of more than a dozen cloud storage services. Scanbot produces good-looking scans across a variety of document types, including books, business cards, and even photos. It can perform OCR in 60 languages, and the results are very good, if not quite best in class. "

IT'S ALL IN THE NUMBERS

Does a little math help you with your genealogy?  It sure does. Just check out this tip from the Genealogy Tip of the Day.

Genealogy Tip of the Day

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Genealogy Help from Wolframalpha There are a variety of tools the mathematical computation website have that are helpful for genealogists. These include: Date and Time Computation Examples Calendar Examples Holiday Examples Units and Measures Genealogy Examples Dates and Times History Examples

BACKING UP THE CLOUD???

Do you back up your computer? What about all that stuff in the cloud? Genealogy Tip of the Day offers a great tip.

Download Your Data This is your periodic reminder to download your data from those cloud-based subscription services you have. Don’t assume images on any site will be there forever. Save it while it is on your screen. Keep images on your own media in accounts/locations you have control over and can access.

WHERE TO START WITH YOUR DNA RESULTS

The Genealogy Tip of the Day offers a good tip for those new to DNA matches. Definitely, a word to the wise.

Genealogy Tip of the Day

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Work Out the Ones You Know Many genealogists start work on their DNA matches trying to figure out their “brick wall.” While that’s definitely a long-term goal, it may not be the best way to start. If you are new to DNA analysis, it might be good to work on your matches for those families where you think “you know everything” already. It’s a great way to build up your skills and learn about DNA methodology. There will be “less to learn” since you already have the family worked up. And you will be better prepared for working on those “brick walls.” You may also discover that you don’t know as much about the “already done” family as you thought you did.

THE RULES OF GENEALOGY - MORE ON RULE 4

James Tanner in his blog, Genealogy's Star, offers more insight into rule four of his 12 rules of genealogy.

Expanded Commentary on the Rules of Genealogy: Rule Four

I published the first six Rules of Genealogy back on July 1, 2014. See "Six of the Basic Rules of Genealogy." This short list included the most famous and basic rule of genealogy: "When the baby was born, the mother was there." I added four rules in a post back on August 11, 2017, entitled, "New Rules Added to the old: The Rules of Genealogy Revisited." One more Rule was added to the list on August 2, 2018, in a post entitled, "A New Rule Added: The Rules of Genealogy Revisited Again." Again, on May 25, 2019, I added Rule Number Twelve in a blog post entitled, "What is "Your" Family Tree? A New Addition to the Basic Rules of Genealogy."You can go back to these original posts to see my original comments and the entire list of Rules. 

In this series, I am reviewing each of the Rules and expanding on the reasoning and background of each.

Rule Four: There are always more records

This is the one rule that you could argue about for hours if you were inclined to so so. So many genealogists claim that they have reached a "brick wall" and that there are no more records for their particular ancestor. What this really means is that is all the records that this particular genealogist has searched. Before I go too far with this commentary, I need to point out that there really are people who cannot be found in the records that do exist such as people who lived in extreme poverty and people who intentionally dropped out of the society where they lived. It is important to distinguish between individuals who are left out of records or managed to avoid being recorded from the concept of somehow the records are not available.

Let me explain what I mean with an example from the U.S. Federal Census. There are a multitude of reasons why any particular individual may not be found in a given Census record. There are also a multitude of other records that may contain information about that missing individual. The idea that there are always more records refers to the fact that it is highly unlikely that any individual researcher will have the time and resources to look through ALL of the records that exist and may contain information about a particular individual. For example, when was the last time you researched utility records or irrigation records? How many times have you looked at local parking violation records? Have you ever searched farm coop records or government subsidy allotment records?

One of the common complaints is that the county courthouse burned. The real question is what kinds of records survived the fire? Were all the local church records burned? If you want an extensive discussion on burned counties, see "Burned Counties Research."

In my experience, most researchers look at less than a dozen different types of records. Rule Four points out that superficial research is far from complete. Here is another example.

Herber, Mark D, and Society of Genealogists (Great Britain). Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide to British Genealogy and Family History. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Pub. Co., Inc, 1998.

There is a second edition, see the following:

Herber, Mark D. 2008. Ancestral trails: the complete guide to British genealogy and family history. Stroud, Gloucestershire [England]: History Press.

This book has 873 pages listing and explaining hundreds of different types of British records. Most of these records are probably unknown to all but the most expert and dedicated British genealogists.

One of the best places to begin to see how many records there are in the world is to look at the FamilySearch.org Research Wiki. There are currently 90,418 articles listing records from all over the world.

Rule Four is more of a challenge than it is an absolute statement about the availability of records.

ABOUT INDEXES

Genealogy Tip of the Day posted an informative tip about indexes. It is a good memory jogger.

Genealogy Tip of the Day

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Read About the Index Indexes to print materials and printed books that are themselves indexes are not all created the same. Always read the preface to see exactly what material was used to create the index. For a book that has it’s own index, read the introduction to the index (if there is one) too see if there are any comments that are relevant. And in books that are themselves indexes, determine how the index is sorted. It might not be strictly alphabetical–I used an index where the items were sorted by year and then by name. I’ve used indexes where the women were indexed with their first and maiden names in reverse order to facilitate finding them when only their first name was known. And I’ve seen other variations. Indexes to marriage records may have a separate series of entries for grooms and brides, or the book may be alphabetical by male with a female index in the back. Names of bondsmen (if appropriate) may be in the book, but not indexed. This is not always explained in the index. Don’t assume that the index you have is always a strict alphabetical index–it may not be.