Saturday, July 05, 2008

New FamilySearch Tree Sagas - Week 8

I wasn't stuggling to get on New FamilySearch this week. I was just super busy. Late this afternoon I started to transcribe the minutes from the last UVPAFUG monthly meeting. All day I've been wondering if I could squeeze in my New FamilySearch time. It hits 9pm and the minutes are not finished. Soooooooooo, I stop what I am doing just to get into NFS. I am really curious to see what the new updates were since maintenance Sunday and Monday.

On the main page where you sign in there is a link off to the right that says "Click here to view a list of recent updates to the new FamilySearch" I was disappointed to find that no new announcements are there. It still has the updates from 19 May 2008. Well, maybe I will stumble upon the new enhancements while I work on my family members.

Last week I found my grandmother's middle name was Lavina on NFS. I had called my father to confirm it was in fact correct information and it is. WAHOO!! new data. I do wonder why in all these years I've never asked my father that question before? I think I even had only "L" for my grandmother's middle initial when I interviewed her back when I was a kid. She told me the story of her premature birth. Everyone had given up hope on her survival but her aunts. They kept her in the oven and feed her drops of brandy. She was so tiny you could put a tea cup on her head. Boy, have I got to get those tapes digitized SOON!

Because I am thinking about my grandmother Sarah Lavina Miller I decide to work on her parents and siblings tonight. Donald Carlton Miller and Ella Spinning. I have an interesting situation with my great-grandmother Ella Spinning. She was born illegitimate so my father had her sealed to her grandparents instead of her mother. Years later I had her sealed to her birth parents. Now I get to see the mess that is causes sealing children to their grandparents. I also found someone working on that line wapblair2043184. I have no idea how I might be related to that person. They appear to not have claimed their submission on NFS yet.

I had to go a couple generations back to get all the combining of parents done so I could work out Ella Spinning's relationship to her parents and grandparents. I was hoping it would let me change the relationship to her grandparents and note it as a sealing line. But, wapblair2043184, had contributed that information and I couldn't edit it. So I just disputed the relationship to her grandparents as her parents and then put a note as to why. It was rather an interesting process to work on that.


The above graphic is hard to read but you can make out the two little crossed out circles in the middle, next to Ella Spinning's name. This shows her relationship to her parents (grandparents) is disputed. I'm actually OK with this. My note and the symbols explain the situation. It doesn't look like her mother is her sister anymore. If someone would bother to look at the "Other Parents" listed then they can see the correct information for her.


See, I think this is all fine for me. I really wouldn't want her to be removed from her grandparents family because this is a sealing line. In the eternities she might decide she wants to be with them and not her parents that never married. She has the option to choose which family she will belong to in the next life and I wanted to make sure it was available to her. I just want NFS to also show her correct blood line.

Some of the things I found interesting tonight were:
  • I have census events on some of my records. I must of submitted them with their personal records when I processed the names for the temple. I was surprised that carried over.
  • I found some old notes that must of been off my Dad's family group sheets that he submitted to Ancestral File. It was under my name with my Dad's id next to it. It was one of the legacy contributions that I claimed. So it wasn't until today that I realized I should of been looking under individual and family notes to see what had been submitted previously to the Church. I could of been missing a gold mine by now. I wish they had put some type of flag next to the notes to make you realize they contained something. I had just assumed they were blank up until this point.

I'm still not sure if I have stumbled upon anything new in NFS. It didn't appear to be working any faster either. Well, it's past my bedtime and I have a full day ahead.

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

1 comment:

Brad Jackman said...

Yes, there is something new in NFS this week. If you try to merge two people who are above some record limit recently established and not elaborated upon, you get the error "These records could not be combined for the following reason: the combined record would be too big". Oh great. Now we will CERTAINLY have duplication, as if it wasn't causing enough already. From what I can see, if there are already around 100 records merged, you can't add any more... no way to get around it. Wow. What will they come up with next?