Additional Contact Methods Added to the Consultant Planner

The FamilySearch.org Consultant Planner has shown up on the Get Help menu replacing the "Help Others" link. Another addition is the ability to add someone from your Ward or Stake Directory. However, in going through that process, the program does not seem to add that person to your Consultant List but merely lets the Consultant work directly on the Ward or Stake member's portion of the Family Tree. Apparently, you have to add the connection data each time to help. I have yet to figure out how I am supposed to see the member's Consultant Planner.

Perhaps the person still needs to accept help by clicking on an email. This, of course, fails to address the problem I am running into with people who do not know how to access their email or who do not have an email address. Yes, there are still people out there who do not have regular access to email.

Here is a screen shot of the form you fill out to gain access the Ward or Stake member's portion of the Family Tree. This is not much better, in fact, more difficult, that the now abandoned method of working with a member through their Helper Number.

When performance is measured, performance improves

In the October 1970 General Conference, President Thomas S. Monson, then a counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said the following:

"When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates" (see Thomas S. Monson, in Conference Report, Oct. 1970, 107).

For the past few years, family history activity in the Church has been measured and reported by "Key Indicator" reports to the Stake Presidents. Beginning very recently, the reports have been changed and are now called "Family History Reports." Distribution of the reports has expanded considerably and the reports are now available to many of the Stake and Ward leaders and Temple and Family History Consultants. The colorful reports contain valuable information about the progress of family history in each of the Wards and Stakes of the Church.

If a leader or Temple and Family History Consultant is authorized to receive the reports, they will be available on LDS.org when the member signs into the website. The reports are located in a drop-down menu available from clicking on the member's name by clicking on the link to Leader and Clerk Resources.

Stake Leaders and Consultants will see the stake reports and Ward Leaders and Consultants will see the Ward reports.

These reports should become a valuable tool for the Temple and Family History Consultants in the Church. In some Stakes, the percentages of participation vary widely between individual Wards. Likewise, individual Stakes also vary widely in their members' participation in family history activities. Overall, I have noted a general decline in indexing activity in talking to members of various Wards and Stakes who have the reports. I am also finding that many Wards and Stakes are either unaware of the reports or ignoring them. If you are a Temple and Family History Consultant and registered as such on the Church's Membership and Leaders Services (MLS) website, you should have access to your Ward or Stake's report. Check with your Ward or Stake Clerk to make sure you are registered properly. There is a FamilySearch Help Center document that specifically gives instructions on properly specifying family history callings. The article is entitled, "Specifying family history callings in Leader and Clerk Resources (LCR)." Please provide your clerks with these instructions if there appears to be a problem in accessing the reports.

World Peace and Family History

I ran across this interesting quote:

This is the great mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. War is one of the evils they must forsake: peace is one of the blessings they must cleave to. For they are to link together the hearts of the ancestors and their descendants. They are to turn the hearts of the Jews to their Prophets, and this is essentially a work of peace. It is temple work, and men of blood cannot build or administer in temples.

It comes from the following book.

Smith, Joseph, and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Doctrine and Covenants, Containing Revelations given to Joseph Smith, Jr., the Prophet. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1951. Page 621.

Here is a continuing quote from the same page.

Unless the people of God are faithful to their trust as the heralds of peace, the whole Earth will be smitten with a curse--even the curse of war--"and all flesh be consumed before me." Such condition would not permit of work for the dead in the temples of God.

These quotes come from the commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants, Section 98. Even though I have read and reread the Doctrine and Covenants many times, Section 98 did not catch my attention as pertaining to temple work. Here is the quote from that Section:

15 For if ye will not abide in my covenant ye are not worthy of me. 

16 Therefore, renounce war and proclaim peace, and seek diligently to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children; 

17 And again, the hearts of the Jews unto the prophets, and the prophets unto the Jews; lest I come and smite the whole earth with a curse, and all flesh be consumed before me.

This Section talks about our relationship to the laws of the land and is usually referred to in conjunction with the justification of the constitutional law. But here is another explanation of the close relationship between seeking out our kindred dead and the idea that this is the antithesis of war.

I would extend this principle to the idea that involvement in temple and family history work is the basis for peace, not only in the world but in our individual families. 

Collaboration Without Collaborators: The FamilySearch Family Tree

The whole idea of a wiki is to allow collaboration between the various users. The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is basically a wiki as I have pointed out many times in the past. See "The FamilySearch Family Tree is not paper" for an example. Here I need to quote myself, which I rarely do.

The Family Tree is not a paper genealogy program. 

This is probably the first and most difficult concept for the present genealogical community to accept and understand. Most of the current users of the program began their involvement with genealogy (or its euphemism, family history) either filling out paper forms or watching others fill out those same forms. The Family Tree is not limited in time and space to paper forms but the "paper forms mentality" still pervades the entire community. The most common symptom of this mentality is the "my treeism" noted by Family Tree Project Manager, Ron Tanner in a number of presentations. See "Ron Tanner Discusses Family Tree Road Map at - #BYUFHGC" and "Ron Tanner -- Live From Salt Lake City!" and many others. Contributions to the Family Tree immediately become the property of the Family Tree and not any individual contributor. No one owns the Family Tree. This fact is fundamentally disturbing to many users.

That post was written almost two years ago and I could have written the same thing today and still be facing the same issues and the same problems.  What I am seeing today is that the Family Tree is turning into more of a battleground than a venue for collaboration. For different reasons, a number of my children and their spouses have become very involved in a high level of research with the Family
Tree. As a result, I receive a significant amount of feedback about their interaction with other users of the Family Tree.

The main issues revolve around the fact that the contributors to the Family Tree either ignore attempts to communicate and collaborate or react so adversely as to discourage further contact. I have highlighted some of these negative responses in recent posts. For about the last ten years or so, I have been intentionally watching the cumulating mess in the Family Tree (and in new.FamilySearch.org) concerning my own "Tanner" surname line. One observation that I have made from time to time is that there is a dearth of primary research.

Finally, I decided it was time to enter the fray and start sorting out the Tanner family entries in the Family Tree. More recently, I have been chronicling my efforts in a number of posts using the title "Finding Francis." So far, I have yet to find even one person who has added even one supporting source document to resolve the issue. In some cases, dozens of "sources" have been added, but those sources consist entirely of repeating the unsubstantiated conclusions of past researchers. In effect, I am contributing in a vacuum.

I am aware of many very competent and highly educated people that claim ancestry through the Tanner line. Where are these people? Why have I been spending years now adding supporting documents and records without encountering even one person in the huge Tanner family that is willing to collaborate or provide a modicum of additional support? I do not have to go very far to give examples of the problem. See "Finding Francis -- A Major Breakthrough."

Unfortunately, every one of my children and their spouses involved with the Family Tree on other family lines has been giving me exactly the same feedback. Their frustration level is rising rapidly.

I can give one really pertinent example. The main battle consists of establishing the parents of Francis Tanner MTC6-5WW. The traditional claims are based on incomplete research done in the early 1900s. There are currently two duplicate copies of a "William Tanner" who the traditionalists claim is the father of Francis Tanner. This "William Tanner" is very likely a composite of two or three or more "William Tanners" who lived in Rhode Island about the same time. There are dozens of sources cited for each of the two duplicates. Many of the people who have been adding these sources have added the same records over and over again, apparently without noticing that the records have already been attached. Here is a screenshot of part of the list of sources for William Tanner LH2G-FGG.

There are eight copies of the same index attached as sources for the marriages recorded for this particular individual. This index is found on Ancestry.com. Here is the description of the "index."

Original data: This unique collection of records was extracted from a variety of sources including family group sheets and electronic databases. Originally, the information was derived from an array of materials including pedigree charts, family history articles, querie.

None of the records in this database are substantiated by original documentation. The sources cited are worthless. Interestingly, not one of the entries for this person showing a marriage has a marriage date. You might also note that one of the sources listed is the FamilySearch Family Tree. Hmm.

Now, is there one of these people who would like to spend a few minutes talking to me or writing to me to find out what is really going on here? Not a one. Where are the collaborators?

The Fan Chart Illusion

The fan chart view of your family tree is an alluring illusion. Blank spaces beckon like goldfields. When you look at a fan chart view of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree, you need to remember one very important detail: The Family Tree is a compilation of over a hundred years of combined genealogical research. Blank spaces mean that all those people for all that time had not been able to find those people represented by the blank spaces. In fact, they couldn't even make up fictitious people to fill in the blanks.

But there is an even more insidious problem with those blank spaces. Many times the generations that go back to the blanks are poorly documented and imaginary and may be wrongly entered. In other cases, the blank spaces represent true end-of-line situations where the available genealogically significant records no longer exist or are still not available. Notwithstanding this reality, the blank spaces do beckon like the sirens call.

From my own personal perspective, those blank spaces represent the need to do a lot of research.  Let me use the blank shown above as an example. Here is the landscape view of that same blank space.

If you were lured into looking at this blank space, you would soon find out that David Shepherd, the end of this particular ancestral line, is fairly well documented except for one significant fact: the identity of his parents. None of the documents discovered so far (remember that this means over the past 100 or so years) have shown the identity of his parents. Perhaps part of the problem here is revealed by examining the attached sources.

The key document is his probate file that shows that he was "insolvent" at the time of his death.

These were poor people living in Vermont in the early 1800s. It is possible that future research will finally discover his parents, but the issue here is that intensive research has not been productive so far.

Many genealogical newcomers are lured into this illusion. They begin their research by jumping over generations of their ancestors shown on the family tree and immediately try to find the missing link. As this list of sources for David Shepherd graphically indicates, even concerted and intensive research into a variety of documents may be necessary before there is even a possibility of finding the ancestors.

But wait, there are some different circumstances. What if you really are just beginning? what if your own fan chart is empty?  You are still in exactly the same situation. You need to start doing research and find supporting documents for your family. Depending on the location and your family's circumstances, you might have an easy go of it for a while. But do not be surprised when you find that you are stumped and have a blank that you cannot seem to fill. This is the great challenge of genealogy and exactly what keeps me going and doing research day after day.

Finding Francis -- A Major Breakthrough

I spent the entire day at the Salt Lake City, Utah Family History Library looking for records and after hours of searching, I found some crucial references that open up the entire issue of Francis Tanner's parents. Here is the summary of the situation.

Francis Tanner (b. 1708, d. 1777) of Rhode Island is my fifth Great-grandfather. A revered family tradition links him to a "William Tanner" as his father. Recent contributions to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree have this "Willam Tanner" birth on 10 March 1657 in Surrey, England and his death on 23 December 1740 in South Kingston, Rhode Island. William would have been 49 years at the time of Francis's birth, assuming he is the father. However, there are as yet no records indicating the name of Francis Tanner's father or mother and further, there are no records connecting the William Tanner born in Surrey, England to anyone in America. Additionally, the Family Tree shows the 1657 William Tanner married to "Mary Babcock" during the time period that Francis Tanner could have been born.

The crux of this tradition is a series of conclusions reached by Reverend George C. Tanner in a book he published back in 1910 and now accepted as "fact" by the Tanner family. Here is the reference to the 1910 book.

Tanner, George C. William Tanner, Sr. of South Kingstown, Rhode Island and His Descendants: In Four Parts. Faribault, Minn.: G.C. Tanner, 1910.

A complete digital copy of the book is available on the Hathi Trust website. The book outlines three and possibly four marriages for the person identified as "William Tanner."

• Marriage to Hannah Tibbetts derived from a deed to William Tanner's presumed son, William Tanner that refers to the son's grandfather as Henry Tibbetts
• Marriage to Mary Babcock based on a reference in Job Babcock's will to his daughter Mary Tanner
• Possible marriage to Elizabeth Colgrove based on a reference in a later will of a John Tanner (not the John Tanner known to the Tanner descendants) that Francis Tanner is a kinsman. 
• Possible marriage to Elizabeth Cottrill who married a "William Tanner" in 1722

None of these conclusions were based on Reverend Tanner's own research. As he states in the book, he based his conclusions on the research of others that is not cited or disclosed. Reverend Tanner makes the conclusion that all of these references to William Tanner are the same person who was born about 1560 and who signed a disclaimer deed in Rhode Island in 1680 as a witness. 

My research has been directed at accumulating all of the possible records about Francis Tanner because our research back through the Tanner line is well documented to Francis. But heretofore, no one seems to have found the records of Francis Tanner's parents, despite the references in the Tanner book. 

At the time of the writing of this post, the FamilySearch.org Family Tree provides confused and contradictory information about the marriages and descendants of William Tanner LH2G-FGG. There is a duplicate entry for a William Tanner L5TC-D7V also. 

The Family Tree entries show his birth in 1657 in England and death in 1740 in South Kingston, Washington, Rhode Island, United States (sic). The marriages shown for William Tanner LH2G-FGG only roughly agree with the Tanner Book.

• William Tanner and Hannah Avis Tibbetts in about 1680
• William Tanner and Mary Babcock with no marriage date
• William Tanner and Elizabeth Cottrill  with no marriage date
• William Tanner with an unknown spouse and no marriage date

The children are rather randomly assigned to the wives without regard as to their date of birth or the identity of their mother. In addition, the Family Tree shows two sets of parents for William Tanner in England with siblings born in several different counties. 

There are 128 sources attached to William Tanner LH2G-FGG.

The wives and details for the William Tanner L5TC-D7V are equally confusing. There are only 40 sources attached to this duplicate entry. Here are the wives.

• William Tanner married about 1686 to Hannah Avis Tibbetts
• William Tanner married in 1707 to Elizabeth Colgrove
• William Tanner married in 1722/23 to Elizabeth Cottrell
• William Tanner with no marriage date to Mary Babcock

Again, the distribution and identity of the children are rather random. The basic flaw in the Tanner Book and in all the subsequent entries based on that book's speculation is that there was only one William Tanner in Rhode Island in the time period covered by these entries. By the way, even with over 100 sources listed, there are no records yet cited substantiating a connection between Francis Tanner and any of these supposed marriage couples. 

Now to the present. I have been reviewing my efforts to find Francis' parents. I have found four different "William Tanners" living in Rhode Island during the time period that could be Francis' father. As the image above shows, there is probate file with a William Tanner who had a son named Francis and a previously deceased son who is probably Nathan Tanner who died before his father as shown on the same page. 

Here the dates start to become crucial in separating out the families. This William Tanner with the wife named Elizabeth and a son named Francis died in 1757. If he was the same William Tanner that is featured in the Family Tree, he would have been about 100 years old when he died which is not impossible but unlikely. This image came from the following book:

Another of the unsupported assumptions made in the Family Tree entries is a marriage between Mary Babcock and a William Tanner based on the speculations of Reverend George C. Tanner back in 1910. Here is an entry in another book that shows a marriage record for Mary Babcock, the daughter of Job Babcock.

The entry does not identify the Tanner who married Mary Babcock, but the date is significant. Presently, the Family Tree has 11 children listed for the undated marriage of Mary Babcock and William Tanner. The marriage date in the record says that Mary Babcock married a "Mr. Tanner" in 1715. This is after the birth dates of all of the children listed except the last two. Francis Tanner, who is listed in the William Tanner will shown above, was born in 1708 and his brother Nathan Tanner was born in 1709/10. Nathan's birth record and will both state that his mother's name was Elizabeth, not Mary. William's will shows a wife named Elizabeth. There are two possibilities:

• Mary Babcock did not marry a man named William Tanner
• Even if Mary Babcock did marry a man named William Tanner, he is not the same William Tanner that had a wife named Elizabeth at the time of Mary Babcock's marriage

I still need to find the original copies of the wills of William and Nathan, if they still exist. But I am now certain that Francis and Nathan Tanner's parents were a William and Elizabeth Tanner and that Mary Babcock was never married to Francis and Nathan's father. I think the burden has passed to those who are living with the disastrous mess on the Family Tree to clean up the duplicates and read all of the "sources" and acknowledge that there are multiple William Tanners in Rhode Island and start cleaning up the mess. 

I remain amazed at the total lack of genealogical proficiency and even basic interest shown by the descendants of John Tanner of New York who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If you are a descendant of John Tanner, perhaps it is time to get beyond the erroneous conclusions of the Tanner books and start doing some research into the records in Rhode Island. I spoke to one of my Tanner cousins just recently and tried to tell him about the new research and he showed not the slightest interest. This is the general response I get from the Tanner descendants.

Preserving and Sharing Your GEDCOM File

Now 18 long years since FamilySearch.org abandoned the development of GEDCOM, the file transfer standard is still being used. For some comparisons, in 1999 IBM released the "Microdrive," a 170 MB and 340 MB miniature hard drive. As a comparison, 8 Terabyte hard drives of about the same size and thousands of times the capacity are readily available today for about $179.00. Oh, by the way, WiFi was also rebranded from the IEEE 802.11b short-range radio networking standard in 1999. Remember the Apple Macintosh Computer was still a few years in the future and 1999 was the year the first BlackBerry was introduced.

Notwithstanding its comparative antiquity, GEDCOM is still supported by most of the genealogical database programs for the simple reason that there is no newer or better substitute. Fortunately, FamilySearch.org has provided a way to preserve and share your antique format GEDCOM file with others online for free. The link is found under the Search tab on the top of the FamilySearch.org startup page. It is further found by selecting the "Genealogies" link in the drop-down menu. Then down to the bottom of the Genealogies page.

This is also an indirect way to submit a file that may be added to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. This process involves three steps.

1. Upload your file to FamilySearch. Once uploaded, the file becomes searchable within approximately 15 minutes and will be preserved on FamilySearch. 

2. Compare your file with existing entries in the Family Tree. The intent here is to avoid duplicate entries in the Family Tree by identifying already researched ancestors or possible matches to your ancestors. This process compares each person in your GEDCOM file with the entire Family Tree. If you have a large file, it will take you a very long time to compare each person. Any entry in your file that matches an entry in the Family Tree will be skipped over. 

3. Contribute your GEDCOM to Family Tree. After comparing your GEDCOM you can share your research with the Family Tree community. Any living people in your GEDCOM will not be added to Family Tree. 

It is my experience that there are only a very small number of GEDCOM files, usually ones done entirely by a single person where the file has not previously been submitted to FamilySearch, that will not have a significant number of duplicate records already in the Family Tree. I always strongly discourage trying to upload a GEDCOM file until the person with the file has thoroughly examined what is already in the Family Tree program. Most of the people who ask me how to upload a GEDCOM file have never looked at the Family Tree and are just assuming that their work is unique. 

So, if you have been researching your family in a place where there are few records no one in your family has previously worked on the Family Tree, you can try to go through the upload procedure, but do not be surprised if you still find a lot of duplicates.