Still Waiting for the Golden Years: Too Busy to Wait

I realize that I am getting older because I have children who are old and grandchildren who are graduating from Brigham Young University. I guess the main indication of age is the cumulative effects of years of being in everything from multiple car accidents to an avalanche. Downhill skiing and rock climbing contributed their share of the injuries as did falling down stairs and crashing into the ground on multiple other occasions. 

I chose to do all those things and feel like I deserve the consequences. What I think is interesting is that despite all that I still feel like I should be out looking for a job or starting a new business. I keep a list of "To Do" items and it is growing longer every day. 

One of the most enduring images I have of old age is from a short video produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints back in 1977 called "The Mailbox." Granted, I am still not quite as old as 83-year-old Lethe who is depicted in the movie, but I am sure I am not waiting at my mailbox for some contact with my family. Times have changed and I am electronically connected to everyone. I can talk to any one of my children and their family members in a few seconds. But reality is that I am busy, they are busy and I don't have time to walk out to a mailbox or sit around feeling sorry for myself. What if they remade the movie with Lethe on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google+? What if Lethe was now volunteering for a local charity or participating in the senior activities at the local recreation center. In Provo, we have a wonderful Rec Center that has multiple activities for Seniors every day. We have been to one or two, but mostly we use the advanced exercise equipment and walk on the track.

There comes a time for all of us old or young when our life's journey comes to an end. But meanwhile, there isn't time enough to do even a small percentage of the things I need to do and want to do. I have been thinking about a trip to the Himalayas or Antartica, but those probably won't happen, what will happen, as long as I can move and think, is that I will keep writing, talking, doing genealogical research and helping people find their families. Oh, I failed to mention currently spending over 40 hours a week digitizing probate records at the Maryland State Archives. As the hymn says,

 I have work enough to do,

Ere the sun goes down,

For myself and kindred too,

Ere the sun goes down:

Ev'ry idle whisper stilling

With a purpose firm and willing,

All my daily tasks fulfilling,

Ere the sun goes down.

I Have Work Enough to Do

What makes you think your part of the FamilySearch Family Tree is perfect?

I continue to get a steady stream of people who are using or have used the FamilySearch.org Family Tree and who complain about "changes" to their "family tree." Among those who complain, I see a significant number who aver that they will never ever use the Family Tree for their genealogy.

I guess my initial comment is directed at those who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If you are a member and you are taking the position that you will not utilize the Family Tree then you are simply saying that you refuse to do ordinance work for your ancestors. I suppose you can take that position, but I might also mention that taking that position has some ultimate consequences you may not like. The reason this is the case is that the Family Tree is the only way you can presently reserve names for Temple ordinances.

But what I think is more astounding is that these same people profess to be "genealogists" or "family historians." If they are concerned about changes to their portion of the Family Tree, I can only think that they must believe that what they have in some other program is perfect and totally accurate. Well, I have been looking at pedigrees for about 36 years now and I have yet to find one (even my own) that is not riddled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Oh, there are some exceptions. Those who have less than a dozen or so names in their portion of the Family Tree. Most of the complaining about changes applies to people who lived before 1850. If the person is complaining about changes to more recent family members, they are not watching the people or they have yet to add all their documentation.

I am not writing about people who, like me and my family members, who see dozens of changes every week but just go about fixing any of the inaccurate or incorrect information or reversing the changes to the information supported by the attached sources. As I have written just recently, if you are going to participate in Temple work, you need to accept the fact that there is a degree of maintenance and support needed to maintain a cooperative enterprise such as the Family Tree.

Here is a list of appropriate responses to changes in the Family Tree that don't involve abandoning Temple work and having negative thoughts about the Family Tree.

• Clean up all of the entries in your part of the Family Tree
• Research and add valid sources to every person
• Watch everyone in the Family Tree that you can identify and are concerned about
• Carefully go through and look at each change made every week as you receive notices about changes
• Make all the corrections as quickly as possible and resolve any real issues that develop
• Make sure you contact every person who makes a change and politely ask them for sources supporting what they changed
• Don't rant, yell, throw things or otherwise react to the changes made
• Accept the fact that some of your relatives don't have a clue
• Do more research and make sure their changes aren't valid before you react at all

That's a start as to what I would suggest. We find the Family Tree to be a fabulously valuable research and support tool. The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is the solution, not the problem. 

Yes, I have seen more than my share of irrational, careless, uninformed, ridiculous, wrong, changes to the Family Tree. So what? I have also seen a lot of extremely valuable researched additions. 

Why is The Family History Guide a Free Website?

https://thefhguide.com/index.html

Normally, an extensive website such as The Family History Guide would have a subscription component. But all of the support, organization, and content is completely free. We can only do this because The Family History Guide website is supported by The Family History Guide Association, a non-profit charitable 501 (c) 3 organization. If you were to subscribe to one of the commercial websites online, such as one of the large online family tree/database websites, you would spend perhaps hundreds of dollars a year for your subscription. All of that money would be an out-of-pocket expense. But if you donated an amount to The Family History Guide Association to support The Family History Guide website, you would get a tax deduction for the amount of your contribution.

The only way we can continue to update and expand The Family History Guide website and attend conferences such as the upcoming RootsTech 2019 Conference is to receive donated support.

https://thefhguide.com/assoc-donate.html

As genealogists, there are very few ways that we can benefit the entire genealogical community as much as we can through supporting such an extensive educational effort as expressed by The Family History Guide.

Over and over, I have seen the benefit of having a centralized reference and educational website. The whole website is driven by people like me donating their time and effort and money to keep the website operating.

Regional Trainers Help with The Family History Guide

https://thefhguide.com/rt-home.html

You may not be aware of all of the resources of The Family History Guide website. The extent of the information and links to valuable instructional material is almost overwhelming. But fortunately, it the website is highly structured and you can easily find pertinent information or follow the sequenced instruction at your own pace. The idea of the website is to provide a huge organized set of instructions for all levels of participation in family history; beginner to expert.

In addition, The Family History Guide is creating mentors around the world who volunteer to assist others with their family history at all levels or can do a presentation at an event or conference in your area. There are three levels of Regional Trainers.

• A Volunteer
• A Training Specialist
• A Geo Developer and Manager

Details about these levels of training are available on the "What is a Regional Trainer?" page of the website.

https://thefhguide.com/rt-what.html

You may also be unaware that The Family History Guide provides a structured set of classes and training resources. Let's suppose that you have been called or volunteered to serve as a FamilySearch Family History Consultant. Where would you go for your training materials? What would you use to teach a class or do a presentation? The answer is The Family History Guide. Yes, there are a few materials incorporated in the LDS.org website a few more on the FamilySearch.org website, but not nearly enough to provide answers to all of the questions that arise when helping others with their family history. The Family History Guide has a structured approach to all those materials and much, much more.

Now, what if you want to take your expertise to a higher level? What if you want to become a valuable family history person? Then the only place you will find a free, structured, and sequenced way to do this is by working your way through The Family History Guide. Then if you aspire to become really proficient, you can become a Regional Trainer. Being a Family History Consultant and having the knowledge and expertise to actually fulfill your calling can be a challenge. Let The Family History Guide help you to become competent and proficient.

Start here: thefhguide.com

FamilySearch Family Tree Dark Matter Duplicates

How many duplicate entries are there in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree? I doubt that FamilySearch even knows the number. But I am convinced that there are many more than they or most anyone else suspects are there. Where are these duplicates? Well, first of all just like Dark Matter in the Universe, they are almost undetectable. You will not find these duplicates by checking the "Possible Duplicates" on the webpage for any of your ancestors.

Here is an example of undetected duplicates. If I look for Possible Duplicates for Thomas Hamilton LCJP-JQ2 this is what will show up as a result.

Hmm. Does this really mean that there are no duplicates? No. There are actually a considerable number of duplicates. How is this possible? Because this person's information is vague and incomplete so the search used for duplicates does not find all the variations. How do I know this? Because here are the results of a quick search on FamilySearch using the link on the Search Records part of his Detail page. Here are the results of the search.

There are 142 possible people on this search and some of them are likely to be the same person as my Thomas Hamilton or Hambleton. By the way, if I redo the search using the name "Hambleton" I get the same list of results. The real interesting thing about this entry is not the plethora of Family Tree Dark Matter Duplicates, but the fact that this person has no sources and there is no real connection yet showing that he is even related to me.

If you look at the screenshot above, you will see the icons that look like the beginning of a pedigree chart. These icons indicate that the records with the icons have been attached as a source to another person. Here is one of the others that happens to have some sources and is not in my family line.

Without doing a lot of research, there is no way to know which of all these sources to Thomas Hamilton or Hambleton are the same as my own entry. However, I commonly find this type of duplicate in my English research. Once I start doing the research, I will get more records and when I add some information, I immediately get more duplicate entries. I can spend an entire day on one family doing little more than merging duplicate entries.

So, if you think you are safe when the search shows that there are no duplicates, you might want to do a little more research and see if any of the records you find are attached to Dark Matter Duplicates.

President Wilford Woodruff's Journals Now Online

https://www.lds.org/church/news/more-than-7000-of-wilford-woodruffs-records-now-available-online?lang=eng

A recent news article on the Church News website announced the availability of more than 7,000 pages of the journals of President Wilford Woodruff, the fourth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Journals are available on the Church History Library website. Genealogists should be aware that the Salt Lake City, Utah Family History Library and the Salt Lake City, Utah Church History Library are two different buildings and organizations. They have complementary collections of historical documents and records. I have found valuable genealogical information in both collections.

That said, I decided to take a look at the Journals. Unfortunately, the articles about the online publication did not contain any links to the actual journals. After searching the catalog on the Church History Library website, I found some copies of the journals linked to digital copies on Archive.org. However, I could not find the journals. I finally found another news article with a link.

Here is the page with the list of journals and a link to the catalog page.

https://eadview.lds.org/findingaid/000120297/

I could not find this page using the catalog.

Managing Your Part of the FamilySearch Family Tree

Is your part of the Family Tree looking a little neglected and sad? Here is a checklist for working with the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. The items listed aren't in any kind of order but I have given them numbers for easy reference. They are all things that need to be done to have a happy, healthy Family Tree. For each of these suggested activities, When appropriate, I have provided a link to The Family History Guide for instructions about performing the required maintenance.

Why do we need to manage or maintain our part of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree? The answer is not simple. The Family Tree is essentially a cooperative and in a sense, a "public place" to share all of the information we know about our families with others who are part of our family or may be interested. All such virtual public places, just like real public places out in the real world, need to be constantly cleaned up and maintained. Maintaining the Family Tree is directly analogous to maintaining a garden or keeping our house neat and clean. 

Here we go. Here are my first examples of some entries that need to be cleaned up and then maintained.

#1 The name needs to be cleaned up. The addition of a second surname in parenthesis will not make the Family Tree Searches possible or easy. If there is an alternate spelling of a given name or surname in the records those variations should be added to the other information section of the Details page as Alternative Names. 

Here is the link to The Family History Guide to make this edit. Goal 6: Change information for ancestors in your tree.

#2 

The places and dates need to be standardized. Present and future functions of the Family Tree will depend on having accurate, standardized entries. The double date for Old Style/New Style will not standardize, you need to read the instructions about entering a non-standard entry. The existing place name for the Christening is actually two different places and cannot be resolved without research. My research indicates that the Butterton place is likely correct but I have yet to find a source to support either the place or date. There are no sources attached. By the way, he could not be born in Massachusetts Colony and Christened in England

This task has the same link to The Family History Guide. Goal 6: Change information for ancestors in your tree.

#3

I routinely delete all of these extra birth names. They are artifacts of all the previous submissions for this person over the years. They serve no purpose unless they are actually alternative or nicknames in which case they should be changed to reflect records with the alternative names. They are all duplicates of the name that should be the main entry in the Detail section. 

This task also has the same link to The Family History Guide. Goal 6: Change information for ancestors in your tree.

When these three steps are finished, the entry will look like this with the caveat that there are still no sources attached to verify this information. It actually turns out that finding information about this person may be a real and extensive challenge. If this happens, you may want to work on this person or leave it for someone else. But cleaning up the entries is helpful to future researchers. 

Most of the time, I automatically clean up entries as I see them in the Family Tree even if I am not going to do any more research. With this entry, there is a lot more work that needs to be done.