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When using the FamilySearch.org Family Tree, Record Hints have become ubiquitous. But along with the increased availability of Record Hints, there is a concomitant increase in the number of "false positives" or suggested records that appear to apply to the individual but are really inapplicable.
If I click on the first person in the list above, I see the following:
I can further see the complete list of Record Hints by clicking on the Show Details link at the bottom of the Research Help block.
Here is the complete list of Record Hints for this person.
Before accepting and attaching a Record Hint it is extremely important to think about it and evaluate both the information already available and the new information being offered. This individual is identified as "Jens Christian Christensen (b. around 1818, d. 20 December 1829) in Denmark. There is a Record Hint as follows for a Jens Christian Jensen:
The information suggested fails to correspond to any of the available information, which, by the way, contains a number of possible duplicates. In addition, the suggested record apparently applies to a person who has a daughter who married in Michigan in 1889. A quick check of the children listed for Jens Christian Christensen shows that none of them have a place of death. The key individual in the Record Hint is the daughter, Mary Jensen Christiansen supposedly born in 1854 in Denmark. This entry could be confusing because of the Danish use of patronymics. But what is more confusing is the name of the person in the Record Hint, Mary Jensen Christiansen. Neither of her surnames seem to apply and none of the birth dates of the children or gender of the children listed are even close.
But what is even more important than the fact that this Record Hint seems to be inapplicable is the fact that the entire entry as it exists in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree is a mess beginning with three listed spouses that are apparently duplicates.
Before you begin adding any Record Hints it is important to clean up the entries and verify the information from the already existing information in the Family Tree. For example, here, Jens Christian Christensen is not a Christiansen. He is shown as born in Kvissel, Aasted, Hjorring, Denmark, christened in Aasted, married in Taars, Hjorring, Denmark and buried in Blære, Ålborg, Denmark. Here is a copy of a Google map showing those four places:
The children in the family either have their birthplace missing or listed in Taars, Ugilt or Hormested all in Hjorring. By the way, it would be helpful if all of the place names were listed using the Danish alphabet. Those three places are all relatively close together.
It is evident that a significant amount of research needs to be done on this particular family before we can consider that one of the daughters left Denmark and got married in Michigan.
Record Hints are just that, "Hints" and should not be considered to apply unless they are consistent with the existing information. However, you should also consider the state of the existing information, if, as is the case here, it is in a shambles, you are certainly not ready to add further record hints.
Some insight is necessary here. Danish research is complicated by the issue of patronymics or the practice of naming children after their father's given name. I grabbed this example randomly based on a suggested Record Hint from FamilySearch as shown above. I have not worked on this part of my family line recently at all and cannot determine how accurate the information is without doing extensive research on other individuals, it appears to me that there are possible duplicates for this Jens Christian Christensen person. I have an overwhelming number of similar issues that are more pressing. At the moment, I do not believe that this person is even related to me and the Record Hints and there is no way to determine if any of the suggested Record Hints apply to my own family.
Looks like Google Maps chose the wrong Aasted in your first map. There is another one in Hjorring (where Kvissel is), which would put all three of the places within a smaller region in the north of Denmark. Not that that makes the record correct on Family Search, because a lot of Scandinavian people are a mess and the record hints are often suspect. There are a few well-meaning users in my portion of the tree who seem to mainly go through attaching all the record hints without thinking about if they make sense, and in the worst cases it can result in new spouses and children being added from entirely different regions of the country. I've found that it helps to add every residence I can find in the "Other Information" section because it seems to help the algorithm make more accurate record hints.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to say how much is accurate on that person at this point because except for his burial record all the sources are for the children's births. And it looks like the supposed three wives are duplicates of each other. Now I'm kind of tempted to clean him up.
ReplyDeleteIck, I just looked again and it's even worse than I thought because the death date is when he was 11 and way before the marriage or children's births.
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out some of the additional problems that need to be resolved either before adding Record Hints or as the HInts are added after review and evaluation.
DeleteJames, you need to send things like this to Robert Kehrer. His Hints team is looking for just such examples. Contact me if you don't have his email.
ReplyDelete