The End of Reality -- Detecting the Genealogical Twilight Zone

I have looked at thousands of family trees over the years. The vast majority of them share a common malady. At some point in the pedigree, the information makes a sharp departure from reality and enters the genealogical Twilight Zone. Many genealogists who inhabit this shadow world are so caught up in it, that they believe every link in their pedigree to be the absolutely one, true family tree. They cannot conceive of the fact that they ever departed from reality.

This departure from reality usually occurs at a point where there are no supporting sources for the information listed for a specific family in any given line. This is easily demonstrated from the unified FamilySearch.org Family Tree. This is not a fault with the function of the Family Tree, but a reflection of the combined nature of the data. In essence, the Family Tree is a conglomeration of over 100 years of user compiled data. However, the good news is that sources are being added to the Family Tree in huge numbers. Where the sources end, fantasy begins.

Why am I writing about this subject again? The main reason is the fact that many of the newer family history programs (aka apps) rely on the data from the Family Tree. Because of this fact, many people are using programs that produce unreliable data because the ancestry given by the Family Tree is not verifiable and is very likely inaccurate. As I have mentioned in a previous post, I have only verified my own lines back six generations. I am still verifying and sourcing the descendants of those six generations and that work is far from over. I do not have to go very far before finding long lists of relatives with no supporting source information.

In the following screenshot from the Family Tree of part of my family, the purple icons indicate individuals with no sources. The red exclamation point icons indicate serious problems with the data.

You can also see, if you look closely, that there are unresolved duplicates. I might add that presently these duplicates cannot be resolved and will not be resolved until the new.FamilySearch.org program is completely separated from the Family Tree.

The disjointed data is more insidious that obvious. If I go back another generation with this same family, we see the following:

At this level, there appears to be some documentation, at least the icons showing no sources are missing except for the wife of the ancestor, John Morgan. But an examination of the tree shows that this particular John Morgan has no specific source listings connecting him to Garrard Morgan or supporting a birth or death date. Where did he come from? As a matter of note, this particular line goes back into the 900s. From my standpoint, it ends right here and may end one or two generations more recent.

This is what I mean by the end of reality: pedigree lines that have no sources to substantiate the names included. Pedigrees going back to Adam are only most egregious examples. Any given pedigree might end at the parents of the first person listed without sources. I am presently in a long discussion with a relative who claims to extend the Tanner line back to England. That would be nice except in all our conversations she has yet to provide even one source citation of information tying my ancestor in Rhode Island to anyone in England.

What is interesting is that the participants in the Family Tree are inexorably documenting all of their ancestral connections. That documentation is slowly but surely extending back to each of these points where reality disappears. As the documentation continues to accrue, these junctures will become more and more obvious. Many of them will likely be resolved, others will finally be put to bed and retired from the Family Tree. Over time, the Family Tree will inevitably become more and more accurate.

But the caution presently is that the Family Tree has these departures from reality and the users need to be careful about placing too much reliance on the data until the sources are found and entered.

Family History Missionary Opportunities

Church Service Missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are the unsung heroes of the overall missionary service. Regular, full-time missionaries, even senior missionaries, are often recognized by speaking in their Ward both before and after their callings. Service missionaries, especially those serving less than full-time and serving at home are almost never recognized or even noticed by the Ward family. However, the work they do is extremely valuable and necessary. This is especially true of the corp of service missionaries dedicated to family history.

As the LDS.org website explains, Church Service Missionaries can serve in the home, close to home or away from home. I have been serving as a Church Service Missionary for a number of years, first at the Mesa FamilySearch Library (originally the Mesa Regional Family History Center) and now at the Brigham Young University Family History Library. I loved serving in Mesa and now I love serving at the BYU Family History Library in Provo, Utah. Both have been extraordinary opportunities to work with wonderful people and have fabulous experiences. In both locations, my wife has served with me at least part of the time, unless she had other callings in the Church. We both recently extended our callings for another two years. I am planning on serving as long as they will let me continue.

Serving as a Church Service Missionary does have some interesting consequences. Some of the Bishops in our Wards over the years have been puzzled about how we "fit in" to the usual Ward callings. Some of the Ward members, when they see us with our missionary badges, wonder if we are temporary in the Ward and it takes quite a bit of time to convince the Ward members that we are permanent residents. As we moved into Provo, we found that many of the members of our new Ward were serving in various volunteer and Church Service capacities, some were even serving as Family History Missionaries. This was quite a change from Mesa.

As we have served in various ways in the Family History area, we have spent time helping patrons, one-on-one, and teaching in a variety of ways. Of course, my involvement in family history extends well beyond the time that I serve in the BYU Family History Library, I always have a number of other projects and involvements going on, but the core of my activity is now with the BYU Family History Library where we serve students attending the University, people from the surrounding communities and quite a few people from around the world.

There are many ways to serve and if you are at all interested, I suggest exploring the opportunities on the Family History Missionaries Opportunities page on LDS.org.

FamilySearch Family Discovery Center Opens in Seattle

Here is a press release from FamilySearch about the newest Family Discovery Center that is now open in Bellevue, Washington outside of Seattle.

BELLEVUE, WA—FamilySearch International announces the grand opening of its Seattle Family Discovery Center, the first to open outside its headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. Based in Bellevue, the center offers interactive experiences for visitors of all ages to discover, share, and preserve family histories and memories. It is free to the public. Find out more online at FamilySearch.org/discoverycenter/seattle. 

Visitors to the center are provided with a tablet computer as a personal guide to interface with large touch screens, where they learn more about themselves, view family origins, and discover how ancestors may have lived and even dressed. Data used for the interactive experiences is drawn from online data at FamilySearch.org and select partners. 

The center creates a “Museum of You” feeling through a variety of experiences and activities for children, five interactive station experiences, and software applications that explore family ancestral lines in fun, creative ways to help patrons discover famous relatives. 

When asked how visitors respond to the new attraction, 16-year-old Brynn Stapley of Bellevue, Washington, said, “I see amazement at the technology, the information, and how it’s presented on big screens. Visitors get excited when they discover a little piece of new information that leads to more information about their families. I think people are surprised how much they learn about themselves and their cultural heritage and then leave eager to continue the journey.” Stapley is one of 23 volunteers at the center. 

The center features a high-definition video recording studio, where visitors can answer questions about their life stories and archive the recording for long-term preservation so future children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren can access the recording later. Visitors can also bring a USB drive to take home a copy of the recorded session. 

Becca Escoto, 26, resident of Bellevue and center volunteer, said she met a couple engaged to be married and encouraged them to record their engagement story for their posterity. “It was exciting to see them in the studio, sharing a story that will be important for their future family members,” Escoto said. “What a perfect start to begin their family.” Escoto said she was also surprised to discover that she personally is an eighth cousin to President Barack Obama through their maternal family lines. 

The Seattle Family Discovery Center is a free community attraction funded entirely by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which FamilySearch International is a nonprofit subsidiary.  “We believe our precious family relationships and experiences in this life do not end with death,” said Dennis Brimhall, CEO of FamilySearch International and managing director of the Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 

“Today family history research and telling, sharing, and preserving family memories through stories, photos, and technology are engaging a growing number of individuals of all ages from every faith and ethnicity like never before,” said Brimhall. “Youth want to discover themselves and their family’s history in fun, exciting ways, and adults want to strengthen family connections and leave enduring legacies. The discovery experiences provided by this facility will help do just that,” Brimhall added. 

Planning for the Seattle Family Discovery Center has been years in development, and construction was completed in April 2015. In addition to the family discovery centers in Salt Lake and Seattle, FamilySearch has announced future centers in London, England, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

The Seattle Family Discovery Center is located inside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints facility at 15205 SE 28th Street in Bellevue, Washington.PHOTO A: At the Seattle Discovery Center in Bellevue, Washington, Trace Farmer of Seattle, Washington, discovers 4,586 people share his first name while using the “Discover My Story” experience. 

I think we can expect to see more of theses in the future.

Why does FamilySearch have Partnerships?

For more than two years now, FamilySearch has been publicly involved with third party entities either through its certification program or with declared "partnerships." A list of many of these entities can be easily seen by going to the FamilySearch.org App Gallery. What is the underlying purpose of these arrangements?

Despite the obvious advantages to both sides of such agreements, there are always those detractors who would like to see some sort-of conspiracy or ulterior motive attributed to anything having to do with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So what are these advantages?

In addressing this subject, I do not claim to have any insight other than that gained from listening to people and reading blog posts for the past few years. It seems to me that the first and most obvious advantage is heavily on the side of FamilySearch and the Church. One of the main religious goals of the Church (and thereby FamilySearch) is to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the world. This ultimate goal includes extending the blessings of the Gospel to all mankind, both living and dead. This explains the reason for accumulating a vast library of records about family history. See LDS.org on Family History.

If spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ and researching our ancestors are related principles, then making the information we accumulate about our ancestors available to others, even those not of our faith, is an important objective. As a side note, this is also one reason why keeping your own family history "private" or restricting its availability or refusing to share with family members is the antithesis of the basic reasons for doing the research in the first place. So, the question becomes, how do we, as a people and members of the Church, best share our knowledge with others around the world? One way to do this is to share the accumulated Historic Record Collections and microfilm with some of the larger online genealogy companies. Hence, the partnership agreements with Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, Findmypast.com and AmericanAncestors.org. It also helps to explain why there are so many agreements with other family history oriented entities.

This may appear as a simplistic explanation for what appears to be a highly complex set of agreements, but as is always the case, there underlying motivation for actions taken by the Church is rather straight forward and easily understood.

I can only assume that each agreement with each of the third party family history entities has been separately negotiated and that the parties are satisfied with the arrangements. I have no need-to-know reason for learning about the details of each arrangement or contract, but I can be assured that these arrangements ultimately further the goals of the Church and FamilySearch and that they also benefit the other parties to the agreements. Meanwhile, my own personal benefit of having access to many more records and some highly beneficial programs is obvious to me.

The new.FamilySearch.org Challenge and the Status of the FamilySearch Family Tree

In a recent blog post from the AncestryInsider entitled, "Ron Tanner Fields Questions at - #BYUFHGC" Ron Tanner was quoted as saying that FamilySearch is getting "rid" of new.FamilySearch.org. If you try to go to the new.FamilySearch.org website, you get the following notice:

This notice was updated 3 February 2015. So, here we are at the end of August, 2015 and still waiting for the real "end" of new.FamilySearch.org. I have heard that it might take until some time in 2016, to finally make the complete transition. As stated in the above notice, "This step allows FamilySearch to begin the final phase of the transition, which includes the transfer and synchronization all of the remaining data from new.FamilySearch.org to its replacement, FamilySearch Family Tree."

One of the most prominent problems encountered in the operation of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree because of the continued link to new.FamilySearch.org is the inability to resolve some of the obvious duplicates.

My perception, that comes from constantly using the program, is that the Family Tree is coming along fairly well. There are some duplicate issues that have yet to be resolved, but by and large the Family Tree is almost completely operational.

The real issues with the Family Tree are not going to be resolved merely because the transition from new.FamilySearch.org ends. The underlying issue with the Family Tree is the condition of the data. My response has been and continues to be to systematically work through each of the families in the Family Tree and do the following:

• Correct all the duplicate information as much as possible 
• Correct the names of any family members as shown in the Alternative name section
• Eliminate duplicate individuals when allowed
• Standardize dates and places
• Add as many sources as can be found from my own records and from online
• Make sure that all dates agree and all places actually existed at the time 
• Delete any unsupported relationships

Granted this is a slow and somewhat tedious process, but until all the corrections have been done, the information is blatantly unreliable. As a result of "correcting" the data in the Family Tree, I am reasonably confident that the information for my lines is mostly accurate back six generations on all my lines. In addition, most of the descendants of these six generations have been verified and corrected. There are one or two of the lines that are inaccurate in the seventh generation, so I am currently starting on the seventh generation families.

I realize I live in a family history world where some people wish they had my problems, but by the seventh generation, the numbers start to be come a major challenge.

In short, I am no longer "waiting" for the complete transition away from new.FamilySearch.org. I feel that enough progress has been made in stabilizing the Family Tree to allow me to do much of the work that needs to be done to correct the entries. There is no longer any valid reason to wait for further developments. The few cases where the duplicates cannot be merged can continue to be ignored, but otherwise, it is time to get to work and correct the Family Tree.

Direct Messaging Shows up live in the FamilySearch Family Tree

The very long anticipated direct messaging showed up in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. This allows those signed into the Family Tree to send messages directly to those who do not allow their email address or other contact information to show up in the program.

In this case, sending a message to "unknown4470317" isn't going to work. If the person named is no longer alive or the contributor is something other than a real person, there is really no one out there to respond. But if the problem is simply a lack of a way to contact the person, an instant message might help.

Groundbreaking for new St. George Family Discovery Center

Groundbreaking for new St. George FamilySearch Center from KCSG.com on Vimeo.

Here is a local news report from St. George, Utah about the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Family Discovery Center. I suspect that there may be a few more of these announced in the future.