New FamilySearch Tree Sagas - Week 4

This article was almost not written. I lost valuable time this week with the upgrade to a newer computer. Thankfully that is completed, I was actually finished with the re-installation of programs and the tweaking of settings Wednesday evening. But, Thursday was my UVPAFUG board meeting and Friday was my shift at the Family History Center. Today I have spent all day reading all my past emails and getting caught up on the recent news on the genealogy scene.

Since I am still in the developmental stage of creating this habit; to work on my family in New FamilySearch, I just had to find time to work on it. Once again, thankfully, it is Saturday and technically I will have worked on my family in NFS this week. I like Monday evenings best, but sometimes we have to be flexible.

The first thing I noticed this week before I even signed in to NFS is that President Gordan B. Hinckley's picture was missing off the sign-in page. I'm not sure when that changed but this was the first time I noticed President Thomas S. Monson's photo there instead. It has his quote

"I testify that when we do all we can to accomplish the work that is before us, the Lord will make available to us the sacred key needed to unlock the treasure which we so much seek."

I don't know it just made me sad to see President Hinckley missing from the site. It was through his inspired direction that this whole project was undertaken. Now I wonder what his quote used to say. I know we are equally guided through President Monson. It was just one of those moments that signals things have now changed.

Speaking of change last week when I was working on my family in NFS I put in a request to have my mother's legacy contribution change to my name. I put the request in on the 27th and on the 29th I received the follow email.

Dear Sister Zamora,

We have received your request to claim the legacy contribution of your deceased relative as yourself. Your relationship and the death information have been validated and the request has been approved. All of the contributions with the id of 'aharris684130' in newFamilySearch have been switched to you and have your new registration id as contributor. You should now be able to edit those legacy records.

Thank you for using new FamilySearch. You do not need to respond to this email unless you have further questions.

Sincerely,
Family History Support

I think that was pretty good turn around time.

All week long I kept having this thought come into my mind. You better put a note on mom's brother Rachel's file that he is a male child. I really hadn't looked closely to see if he was even listed as a male child when I worked on that family earlier. So first thing I did when I signed on was take a look. Yup, he's still a male. I noted the fact that he is a male child on his record. I have always been fascinated with his name and I really need to send away for his birth or death certificate.

I found a note in my mother's papers after she died that had the name Horathio on it and it made me wonder if Rachel could be short for Horathio. Rachel was only 2 1/2 yrs old when he died from drinking carbolic acid, which they used to treat their horses and cattle. I have always thought it weird that after having three girls in a row that my grandparents would name their first born son Rachel. I've never even heard of another male children named Rachel. Then again Johnny Cash used to sing about the "Boy Named Sue". I guess you never know the reason why with some people.

Sometimes on NFS you will run across individuals with the same name and info but listed twice once as a male and then as a female. Happily my uncle isn't one of them. You can't combine a male or female together because they are of the opposite sex. I know it annoyed me in the beta test when I would come across that. FamilySearch isn't going to correct that either. That is because they do not want to have repeated ordinances done for people even if incorrectly identified with the wrong sex.

What if someone later on see's my uncle with the name Rachel and goes "Oh my gosh they had his work done as male!" Then they would resubmit him as a female and redo the ordinances incorrectly. First I hope they read the note that he's a male child. If someone ignores that and still has his work done as a female than I would just dispute the female's information and put my note on it why it's incorrect.

Here is what FamilySearch Supports says about this matter:

"The record for _______ showing the incorrect gender was submitted by more than one individual, including a submission for temple ordinance work. This ordinance work is invalid but in order to prevent anyone else from submitting the name with the wrong gender and duplicating the ordinance work, the incorrect record will remain in New FamilySearch. By adding a dispute to the record with the incorrect gender it indicates to others that the information is wrong. We hope this explanation will help you understand the reason the records with the incorrect gender will remain in New FamilySearch."

Disputes and notes are wonderful features I am so glad they were designed into NFS. It's just to bad you can't flag a person's notes so someone will actually go in there and read them before they combine or redo ordinances with different names or sex. It would be nice if you could put a post-em on the record like you can on RootsWeb Worldconnect.

I guess I could always enter Rachel a female child into my grandparent's family and then dispute it. That would definitely be a good "flag". If in addition to that if I reserved the female's name for temple work and just never did it, no one else would be able to either. My luck would be I would accidentally submit the female Rachel's ordinance work unknowingly. Wouldn't I have mud on my face then! Another option is to make a small GEDCOM of this fictitious female Rachel and put some kind of note in the ordinance fields. Then when it's upload and put into the proper family the ordinances would say "completed" even though it's not and not let anyone do the work. Sometime these little bugs in NFS have some great benefits.

What did I do for my uncle Rachel? I just left him with a note saying he was a male child. In the mean time I need to get some birth or death records to verify that really is his name or not. It could be a nickname for all I know. I will just watch the record but it's not likely that my family will submit the name for temple work incorrectly, they are not interested.

I wrote to all my family members after my article last week.

Dear Family,

I am wondering if there are any budding genealogist in our family that might be interested in working with me on our family line? The Church is coming out with a new program called New FamilySearch and I could really use some help in cleaning up the old records of our family on there. Any takers?

I don't know if it made me feel better or not but no one responded. Well my Dad did respond to let me know he was sending me more of his genealogy papers because he is down-sizing his home and getting rid of everything. YIPEE? The other was my sister-in-law that I showed NFS during beta to. My only thought there was who's going to do her family's combining if she is working on my line? So, I guess I haven't been intimidating or putting off any would be genealogist in my family, they just aren't interested. Well, I guess at least not yet!

While working in NFS I didn't actually do any combining. I went through the work I had previously viewed and made sure that I had all the information correct. I was able to edit my mother's old submissions which was very satisfying. While working on my great-grandmother Harriett (Hattie) Hewitt I actually discovered that I had her burial date on her obituary. I was so disappointed when I received the obituary and found that it didn't list her parents names that I never realized it had the burial date on it. This is beginning to be a great review of my files since I am comparing everything. I guess it is helpful after all to have the system be so slow. I gives you time to look things over better.

My great aunt Flora has a daughter Blanche Irene Darling. I have Blanche's birthday, 27 Aug 1915, but no other information, i.e. when she died or who she married. There is another Blanche Darling in my database, which I have no birthday for, just an estimated birth of 1920. I know she married a Charles Weatherwax. I have always wondered if they are the same individual. In looking over my records I realized that since I have my great-aunt Flora's death date of 1 Feb 1982 that I could look up her obituary and see if it mentions who Blanche married in it. See this NFS and it's slowness is really giving me time to reflect and go over my records and come up with further research materials to look into.

I submitted one issue with the system tonight. I edited in the details the locality name for the death of my grandfather John Henry Weatherwax, Jr. [KFT1-VJC]. When I looked back in the summary it has not changed to reflect this correction. I cannot see anyway to make it reflect these changes even though I have gone in to change it in the summary. Since I had set the summary before making the changes I guess it's just all mixed up now. It's not really a big problem. I only standardizing the locality name. When I look at the contributors of the information I see my name added twice in there. I must of been mine and also my mother's submission. I guess they don't merge the contributors together after you take over a legacy contribution. I am curious to see what FamilySearch's response will be. And that is how I leave New FamilySearch for the week.

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