New FamilySearch Tree Sagas - Week 3

In less than 24 hours after requesting to claim my legacy contribution on New FamilySearch I received the following email.

Dear Renee Zamora:

This is an automated response to your recent request to claim a legacy contribution. New FamilySearch provides an opportunity to claim ownership of information that was previously submitted to Ancestral File, Pedigree Resource File, and temple submissions made prior to the release of New FamilySearch.

Your request for contributions with the Contributor ID "rzamora5528634" has been granted.

The New FamilySearch records affected by this notice have already been updated and have your new registration ID as contributor. You should now be able to edit those records.

Thank you for using New FamilySearch. We wish you success and satisfaction in your personal family history efforts.

Sincerely,
FamilySearch Support

Originally I was told it would take 4-6 weeks for it to be approved, so less than 24 hours is fantastic. Last week I also had questions on who contributor unknown4470317 was. I appreciate Christie's comments on my blog post telling me more about that contributor.

Oh and I just checked right now because I thought unknown4470317 sounded familiar. Yup. I've seen it on my lines, too. So plugged that number in the search box in the Help Center and got the following:

Document ID: 101836
new FamilySearch: Temple records show "unknown 4470317" for the contributor name
Problem

Cannot claim "unknown 4470317" as a contributor for legacy products.

Resolution

Instead of a contributor's name, you may see "unknown 4470317" if the information was submitted before current electronic record-keeping methods were in place (the code may also have been used in processing the information for temple ordinances).

"Unknown 4470317" appears if we do not have enough information to accurately identify the contributor or if the contributor does not have a contact name in our database. The code was created to track this type of submission. An "unknown 4470317" submission may not be claimed.

We have received your request to claim a legacy contribution as yourself. Unfortunately, that switch cannot be made. The ID "unknown 4470317" is a generic contact name used on thousands of temple records during a time when contributors' names were not being preserved. If the change you have requested were to be made, you would become the contact for all those temple records. However, you can add another opinion or dispute any wrong information in any of these records. You will not be able to edit any record with the "unknown 4470317" contributor name. Thank you for using the new FamilySearch.

Posted by Christie

It's just great getting feedback from those that have traveled the road before me and are now helping me out. Edith Neville also left me a post giving us directions on how to tile two window screens side by side.

To have 2 windows open side by side, you can R click on the task bar at the bottom of your computer, (a small window comes up). Click on Tile Windows Vertically. This tiles them side by side beautifully. Just be sure you only have 2 windows on the screen. Others can be open but minimized.

Posted by Edith Neville

If you want to see a visual demonstrated on how to use split screens you can go to John Willis' site www.masteringfamilyhistory.com and view his video on that.

Thanks for the tip, keep them coming. Speaking of tips, Alan Jones on the LDSFHCConsultants Mailing List came up with a handout with several wonderful tips for NFS. With his permission I have it reprinted and published in Google Doc's for everyone to take advantage of. The link is: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dsdztvf_0vvd9xtfm . I will add a direct link to it on the main page of my blog for easy reference.

One of the first things I did when I got onto new FamilySearch was to look up my mother's family and find her contributor id. Once located I put in a claim for the legacy contribution. My mother died in 1999 and I am the only one in the family working on our genealogy. I explained that to them. Now I wonder how long it will take for that request to be granted? I really need to talk to my father about claiming his legacy contribution since he no longer does genealogy. It's funny how my whole family thinks I can do all this genealogy stuff by myself. I'm really hoping that they will get on NFS, since their temple districts are now live, and catch the genealogy bug.

While I was working tonight on my family I was surprised to find out that I only have my great great grandfather Weatherwax's year of death and not his death certificate. It is really great that NFS makes you re-examine the information that you have. I really need to order my gg grandfather's death certificate now. He died in 1925 and New York should have a record of it by then.

While I continued going over this gg grandfather's family I found children without their temple work done - YIKES!! How did I over look them? I think I will have to experiment with reserving names for the temple.

I am having a really difficult time staying on my task of combining all the records for my direct line ancestors. I want so badly to add to and correct information on this old research. I know that as you combine records previously missing information might fill in the blanks. In this family I worked on tonight they didn't have any duplicates to combine.

It makes me wonder if I am being pulled so badly in this direction to correct things that maybe I need to explore going that avenue. My sister-in-law had so much fun combining people when I showed her NFS during the beta test. That really could be a good thing to have my family work on and I could clean up the details. Half of me thinks - but they might mess it up! Get real Renee, they have to catch the genealogy spirit somehow. I wonder if nobody in my family works on this with me because I don't share very well? It really has been all mine to work on. That could be possibly true, but then again I've never had any of them express an interest in our genealogy other than getting names to take to the temple. Ouch, maybe I have to re-examine motives and methods here.

As I am working through the lines it is taking forever to go over just one name. But if I just stayed with one person and fixed their records and made them correct then I could check them off my list. It just takes so long to move around in the system you might as well just visit these people once and not keep going over them multiple times. I think what I will do is finish my initial pedigree chart with only four generations on it. Then I will come back and work on all the descendants of that four generations and add and correct as I go over them again. Once I feel that sheet is done then I can plan to move on.

I really should give my siblings a call and see if I can assign them some work to do on this massive project. Well I'm doing a lot of thinking out loud here. Anyone with suggestions please feel free to comment. We are kind of learning this together after-all.

See ya tomorrow, for tomorrow is always another genealogy day!