New FamilySearch Tree Sagas - Week 7

It's Saturday and once again I am struggling to motivate myself to work in New FamilySearch. I don't know what the deal is but I really want to develop this habit. As fate would have it I am not feeling well today. I think my body is just worn out from driving my husband to work in Salt Lake this week. I had to leave every afternoon when I normally take my four hour nap each day. (I have fibromyalgia) Then I would have to go pick him up and leave the house around 10:30pm. Making bedtime about midnight, which is not good when you get up early in the morning to go to work. After a week of this I couldn't get out of bed today until 3:30pm, well into the afternoon. Thank goodness the only thing on my plate today was to work in NFS.

On June 13th I put in a request to claim my father's (who is still living) legacy contribution. It only took 6 days to have this request honored. I was rather impressed on how fast a turn around that was. So this is my first time working on my father's side of the family.

My grandfather Marshall Harris has two different birth dates in my personal genealogy database. I was curious to see who add which dates. Was it me or my father? I have sources in my genealogy database but on some early records I typed them from my father's group sheets and wasn't sure if I had made a transcription error on the dates. I could see that somewhere along the line my father had submitted two different birth dates to the Church on his father. So it would depend on which of my father's family group sheets I got the wrong information from.

I think I finally have which date is correct so I was able to make my first dispute on NFS. Before I made the dispute I made sure that I had all duplicates of my grandfather combined. This made me realize that I do have close extended family members that are members of the Church. How could I of forgotten the Kubricky family? My second cousins, and my father's first cousin. Someone on that side of the family is submitting names for temple work. Could the "J" stand for my second cousin Jill? I know her sister Betsey's husband Ryan is interested in genealogy and we have spoken many times about the common line. I feel so stupid that I forget this family and how much they will be able to add to the help in working on combining duplicates on NFS. It gives me hope!

Anyways about the dispute. After I corrected all the locality names I was able to narrow down just the submission that my father and I have made. I then placed my dispute on the wrong date for my grandfather and gave an explanation of why I thought it was incorrect. I also put an explanation on the correct date and gave an explanation there. The other instances of the incorrect date were from Temple records or my cousin JKubricky. I left that instance alone so it will allow them to correct it if they so desire later.

It is amazing how quickly incorrect information can duplicate among a group of people. Just one typing error and someone can be born on a different day, month or year. Maybe now with NFS our two families will finally have the correct birth date showing for my grandfather. With leaving my own data disputed and showing the incorrect date as wrong others that might have carried on this incorrect information will be able to see the error too. The dispute feature on NFS is a great feature if you use it correctly.

I read this advise about disputing on a mailing list:

In the training I received in Salt Lake we were told not to do disputes because the original submitter can't change the information until all the disputes are removed. We were told to add another opinion instead, saves a lot of work for everyone later on.

That said I can't see anything wrong in disputing your own information so you can let others see which family falsehood or traditions are in error. Then it will stop anyone from adding the wrong information into the program. We should read the notes on the facts before adding a bunch of disputes or new information. It just might let us know our information could be wrong. Disputing correctly dispels errors.

What if you want to dispute a person in the family. Here is what one mailing list member mentioned about that.

I wish there was a list of "don't do's this will cause problems for engineers" ... I just learned we should not dispute an individual unless we are ABSOLUTELY SURE they don't exist. If they are in our family and don't belong ... we should dispute the relationship.

I haven't run into that problem yet but I am glad for the heads up and I am passing it along to you.

Now that I realize I have cousins with information on NFS it almost makes me want to add them as living people. This issue of adding living people to NFS has been discussed on the message board recently. This is the advice on this subject.

The official policy is that we not add living individuals to the new FamilySearch except as necessary to bridge ourselves to our deceased ancestors.

Go to (legacy) FamilySearch.org, select "product support" on the blue bar at the top of the page, and in the "Ask a question" window [ ] enter [add living]. The first document returned states:
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Document ID: 103436: "The effects of adding living individuals to the new FamilySearch and why we shouldn't do it."

Problem: I added my living sister to the new FamilySearch, and now it shows that her ordinances need to be done. I've added living siblings to new FamilySearch twice and can't combine them. I get a read-only or restricted error.

Resolution:
New FamilySearch is a program created to bless the dead. The only time living individuals should be added is as a bridge to your first generation of deceased ancestors, if necessary. For privacy reasons, submitted information about living individuals will only be seen by the submitter, and it will often be a duplicate of records that are already contained in the new familysearch database. Please keep the data about your living family in your genealogy management program on your own computer.

That is excellent advice so I didn't add my cousins and link us all together. I already do have them in my personal genealogy database.

I moved from my grandfather's birth information to his death information once again there was inaccurate information. I don't know why my father put that his dad died in Queensbury, Warren, NY when he died in the Glens Falls Hospital in Glens Falls. I fixed the contributions from myself and my father's information. Which is showing with my name on it. I was able to fix this error and make a note of where he died. My cousins information is incorrect but I am hoping they will look into the note I placed under the right locality name and then correct theirs. Of course my cousins received their incorrect information from my father to being with.

I am so glad I waited until I had the ability to claim and then edit my father's legacy contribution. There was much to correct. The details look rather messy on my grandfather because of all the various dates and locality names. Some of which I can't correct. I am so glad I could set the summary screen for him with all the accurate information.

I was almost going to jump over the screen on my grandfather's record for spouse and children. I figured since all of my father's sibling are living and not members of the Church their information would not be there. I was surprise to find them all there. It must be because both my father and I gave that information to the Ancestral File and that contribution is linked to me. When I looked at my father's record it had a link under contributors to request a correction to his Church Membership record. Now that was a new one. I looked at all the records of my family members that are LDS and saw they have the same link. You just don't find it on those that weren't members during their life time. Which are the majority of the people in my database.

To finish up my project tonight I worked on my grandmother Sarah L. Miller's record. I found that unknown4470317 contributed her middle name. I never had her middle name only an inital. I kept meaning to ask my father what it was. It says Lavina is her middle name. I added it to my personal genealogy program. Since unknown4470317 is a contributor to information on Ancestral File or Pedigree Resource file and generic and non-claimable I can't determine who submitted it.

As I worked my way around my grandmother's file, cleaning up localities I found that my sister Brenda's id was listed as a contributor. I forgot that she had submitted that. I think it's the only temple work she has ever submitted. Her daughter did the baptism for my grandmother after she died. Then my parents came out to the temple there in Toronto to have my mother do the endowment while my sister was going through the temple for the first time and getting sealed to her husband. It was such a great time. I need to call my sister and have her claim her legacy contribution. Maybe I can convince her to help work on combining while I'm at it.

Well, I've learned a lot about my family and new FamilySearch tonight. I am calling it quits for another week. Don't forget that this Sunday and Monday the NFS site will be down for maintenance. I hope whatever changes they do to the systems helps it move a little faster.

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