The Butterflies of Spring

I fully realize that Winter is just getting started here in the Frozen North, but I can still remember that Spring starts very soon in the low deserts of Arizona. Butterflies can be very frustrating for a photographer and it is nice to have large flowers that will keep them occupied for a while so you can get images that are in focus.

More Unanswered questions with some comments on family history

I started this list of unanswered questions with some of my explanatory comment some time ago. I have decided to list the questions with some of my comments. Some questions do not need comments. All of my references to the Family Tree are to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree.

1. What does FamilySearch do when all the green icon (Temples, arrows whatever) disappear?

There has been a lot of discussion and interest in the so-called "green arrow" or now "green temple icons." The idea here is that there are minions of people waiting on the Family Tree with available ordinance work. FamilySearch.org has conveniently marked those individuals lacking ordinance data, first with green arrows and now with green temple icons. But if you think about this for just a few minutes, you will realize certain facts.

A. If I add new, undiscovered people to the Family Tree, I will probably reserve the Temple work for myself or my family.
B. The number of people who are already on the Family Tree who needed ordinance work are probably finite.
C. If you have a lot of people searching the Family Tree for green icons and converting them to their reserved lists, then the pool of possible green icons will diminish rapidly.
D. If no one adds new, valid names to the Family Tree, then the supply will probably dry up.

2. What is the current status of green icon names in the Family Tree?

Some time ago, if you choose a family line at random in the Family Tree and started clicking back without regard for the accuracy of the line until you were in the 1600s or even the 1500s, you could find any number of green icons. But my current experience is that these icons are rapidly disappearing and those that are left contain the limitation that Possible Duplicates Exist.

So should I ignore the duplicate warning? Here is what is available in the Family Tree for this perosn with a green icon.

There is no birth, death or other information at all. What am I supposed to do with this green icon now? Actually, I can click on the Ordinances tab and request the ordinances But that leads me right back to the screen above about the possible duplicates. So the supply of green icons is diminishing and this brings me back to my first question. Here is the next question.

3. What do I do when I see a notice that possible duplicates exist?

If I click the "Learn" link on the notice, I will be taken to a Help Center article entitled, "Merging duplicate records in Family Tree." The introductory statement says:

Note: Merging is a complex process. You must decide if two entries are for the same person. If it is the same person, you decide the information to keep. Please take the time necessary to carefully review each possible duplicate.

Now, if I have been learning about the Family Tree for a while, I understand exactly what this notice is talking about. But that brings up the following question. 

4. What do I do if I do not understand how to merge duplicates"

Of course, I suggest that you carefully read the instructions given on the "Merging duplicate records in Family Tree" article. So I do this and then I check to see if "Alexander Allan" has any duplicates. The only distinguishing characteristic of Alexander Allan is that he is married to Sarah Nevers.

On the other hand, Sarah Nevers has three husbands, two of which are named Alexander Allan.

She has no children listed for either of the Alexander Allan marriages both of which took place in 1805 when she was 48 years old. This could be a second marriage. Hmm. This sounds like we are getting into that dreaded area of "genealogical research." How is that possible? I thought I could click on a green icon and take the name to the Temple.

In this case, when I click on the link to possible duplicates for Alexander Allan is see the following:

If I review the merge, I see that both of the Alexander Allans were married to Sarah Nevers but I have the option of disregarding all this matching information and clicking on a link that says "Not A Match." I could hypothesize that Sarah Nevers could have married two people with the same name and one of them needs ordinance work. Of course, they were both married in the same year in the same place, but it could happen. So even at this point, if I really want a name to take to the Temple, I can still do so.  But since I am an honest person, I see that the two individuals match and click "Continue Merge."

When I finish the merge, I check to see if the ordinance work is still available. I find that all the work for this person with the green icon, was done back in 1996. No more green icon. Maybe next time I won't be so anxious to merge the two individuals especially if there is some argument that they might be not a match.

5. Am I really related to Alexander Allan?

This is a more complex question. At this point I could probably not figure out how I am related to Alexander Allan, but I did get to him by going back to one of my remote ancestors listed in the Family Tree and then found him as a descendant. Theoretically, he is my cousin. There are no sources listed for any of these people so I have no way to verify any of the information. In fact, it is unlikely that I can remember how I found Alexander Allan in the first place since I was just randomly clicking on names in the Family Tree. Maybe since the Family Tree had a connection to Alexander Allan, I am automatically related to him. But since there are no children listed for the marriage between Alexander Allan and Sarah Nevers, I am certainly not a descendant of this marriage. Do I know what to do now?

6. Don't I just keep trying to find a qualifying green icon?

After all, there is no need to worry about how I am related or if I am related at all because the Family Tree provides the relationship and I can rely on the Family Tree. So now I go back to the list of descendants of William Green II and see what I can find.

I see a whole lot of icons but none of them are green and some of them are red warning icons. Oh, oh, it looks like I might be back to that dreaded problem of doing some research to resolve some of these icon problems. Fortunately FamilySearch is providing me with a lot of sources in the form of record hints. But since no has told me what to do with the other icons, I just keep looking down the list for more green ones. I see some Temple icons but they are blue or orange. This means that someone has already found these opportunities for Temple work and I am too late.

But here are two more green icons.

This time there are no warnings about duplicates. Apparently, I am free to click on these icons and take the name to the Temple. I read all the rules for qualifying names and guess that I have read and comply with the requirements. So I click and add Mary Stockwell to my Temple list. Just in case, I check for a duplicate for Mary Stockwell. FamilySearch finds no duplicates. Of course there are no sources for this marriage between Mary Stockwell and Nathanial Green, but there it is in the Family Tree.

7. Do I have any further interest or concerns about Nathanial Green and Mary Stockwell?

Here is where there is an area of disagreement. Some people feel there is no more obligation at this point to do anything with the Family Tree. There is no need to verify the information or find any sources at all. If I take that viewpoint, I am relying entirely on the accuracy of the Family Tree. But I just read a long statement about how I was supposed to be doing Temple work for my relatives.

8. What if Mary Stockwell did not marry my Nathanial Green?

Without resorting to some intensive research, there is no answer to this question. But do any of my concerns really matter? Aren't I just a picky, old genealogist who should be ignored because I am not in tune with the times. The last question is as follows.

9. Am I related to this Nathanial Green?

Can I depend on the relationships in the Family Tree without any sources? That is the real question and maybe I shouldn't be asking the question at all. In any event, there are now two fewer green Temple icons in the Family Tree. But Mary Stockwell has no birth, christening, death or burial information and there are about 2,500 people in the Family Tree named "Mary Stockwell" or with a name very close to Mary Stockwell and one of them is listed as marrying a Nathaniel Greene in Massachusetts in the 1700s but she has apparently been combined with a person named Abigail Fetch.

Anyway, I am just being picky again. This Mary Stockwell also had the name "Cutler." But that gets way too complicated and messy. Besides, there is a marriage record showing a marriage between Mary Stockwell and Nathaniel Green on 14 December 1755 in Leicester, Worcester, Massachusetts. So what am I worried about?

At this point, the real issue is whether or not I want to find out anything about the woman or not. Am I through? Haven't I done my family history? What about the stories? Who was this woman? Who will find out who she was? Of course, now I go on looking for another green icon. Unfortunately, there aren't any more on that particular line down four generations. But I will keep clicking. But I am finding a huge number of red icons. Does that tell me something I should know?

I guess I just have too many unanswered questions. 

What to do when people come out of the FamilySearch Family Tree private space

I had an interesting question recently. A friend's family member died, in this case an aunt, and so my friend entered the death information into the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. Up until that time, the aunt was considered to be alive and therefore the information in my friends portion of the Family Tree was inside my friend's Private Space.The Family Tree "Private Space" includes all living people and their relationships and are not visible to anyone outside of the Private Space. Once a person dies, then technically they are no longer part of the Private Space and they should be visible to everyone.

NOTE: Every person in the Family Tree must be marked either living or dead. If the person is maked dead, then they can have a death date. Removing a death date without marking the person as living, does not automatically make the person living.

The information about the Private Space comes from a Help Center article entitled appropriately, "Understanding Private Spaces." One key to understanding the effect of the Private Space is the statement in the article as follows:

A living person can be represented in multiple private spaces as a different Family Tree person, and each instance has a different ID.

It is also important to understand that anyone not marked as deceased or without a death date is automatically included in the Private Space of the person entering the information. Further as indicated by the article:

Family Tree does not compute the likelihood of people being living, even after they are older than 110 years. Users need to mark individuals as deceased and then search for any possible duplicates.

So what happened to record of my friend's aunt? When the death date was entered the record immediately became visible to anyone viewing the Family Tree. This raises another issue that was not yet a problem for my friend. What if multiple family members have created the same record for the same aunt and they all begin marking their record with the death information? Apparently, all of these duplicates pour over into the Family Tree. But, of course, this will not happen all at once. So it is imperative that when someone dies and you have that person's record in the Family Tree, that you search for duplicates as soon as you mark that person deceased and all the family members may have to continue looking for duplicates for some time.

But there seemed to be another serious problem. This particular aunt was a life-long member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But all of the ordinances she did during her lifetime were not showing. The notation was that they were "Not Available." Well, it is back to the Help Center on FamilySearch.org.

The article on this subject is called "Membership record not showing for recently deceased member in Family Tree." You may have to be signed with an LDS account to see this particular article. The solution from the article is to contact FamilySearch Support at https://support@familysearch.org. The article further provides that you may also click Get Help in the top right corner, and under Contact Us, select Call Us, Live Chat, orSend Message. You will be asked to send an email message with the information below to better ensure the death information appears on the respective record in Family Tree:

• The full name of the deceased member.
• Birth date and birthplace.
• Death date and death place.
• Full names of parents and spouse (or spouses).
• Supporting documentation for the death date. Acceptable forms of proof include: death certificate, obituary, funeral program, or official death index. Scan and attach documentation to the email message.
• Your Family Tree helper information (your username and your helper number). See the document Where can I find my Helper Access Number in Family Tree? (53973) to find your helper number.
• Enter the case number provided by the support agent on the subject line of the email message and send to support@familysearch.org

The reason this is necessary is that the Family Tree is no longer automatically connected to a membership record and therefore entering the death date in the Family Tree does not update the membership record. Likewise, even if the date is entered by a ward or branch clerk, the information is no longer sent to FamilySearch. 

FamilySearch indicates that they are working on a resolution of this problem. Meanwhile, it appears that every time someone dies, all the potential "live entries" for that person will have be merged and the information updated manually by FamilySearch. 

Moving Information into the FamilySearch Family Tree

Years ago, a group of people started a website that became Wikipedia. This huge online reference has become the "go to" place for general and specific information. No matter what you opinion is of the accuracy or reliability of Wikipedia, you still have to recognize that it exists and that it has become a fundamental source for all kinds of information. FamilySearch.org has started down the road of creating the "go to" place for genealogical information. No matter that similar online family trees exist, none of these other integrated family tree programs based on the wiki model have the resources and numbers of people that can potentially be involved with the FamilySearch.org Family Tree.

Sooner or later, the genealogical community is going to recognize that the Family Tree is rapidly becoming the focal point or clearing house for genealogical information. Let me give an example of how I think this is happening.

If I were just now starting my efforts to discover my family's history, where would I start? Suppose I had no knowledge at all about any of my ancestors, even my own parents. This does happen. There are plenty of people out there who do not know the identity of their own parents. But is that the rule? No. Most of us, to a greater or lesser degree, have some knowledge of our relatives. How do we start to find out more? Genealogists have been confronting this problem for a very long time. Whether we know about our family or not, we still have one and we have relatives far and wide around the world. Each time we go back one generation, we increase the probability that someone else in our family has already asked the same questions about our extended family relationships. The challenge is that historically, this information about our family was scattered all over the world.

Now we come to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. Simply put, the Family Tree is a centralized clearing house or warehouse or whatever for storing and preserving family information for the entire world. It may seem presumptuous to take that position, but it is literally true. Information about the world's families is being added to the Family Tree and the data collections on FamilySearch.org at a phenomenal rate. But just as with Wikipedia, the hand wringing and criticisms focus on the Family Tree's limitations rather than on its strengths.

I spend some time almost every single day working with the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. I can see the potential but I also see the reality. The point where the Family Tree becomes the most reliable and most valuable source of family history information has already arrived. Where else can you go to find this much information concentrated in one place? All of the other major online websites have fragmented family trees or family trees that are not connected directly to sources. We need to stop worrying so much about the mechanics of the Family Tree and focus on what it has become: the basic starting point for information about the world's families.

What about the issues of reliability? They are real. But the cure for unreliability is verified information. Genealogy will always have a tentative, uncertain and unreliable component. That is the nature of historical research. The next big or small discovery can re-write history. But for nearly all of us, the basic information about our family connections will not radically change as more information is added to the Family Tree. As we go back in time, this will very likely happen with some lines, but over time, you will find that the Family Tree becomes more and more reliable. This will happen sooner than later if we all start moving our information into the Family Tree. This includes documents, photos, stories, dates, names, places, source citations, everything.

If you are hesitant about putting your information into the Family Tree, get over it. It is time for action. The more information we move into the Family Tree, the more reliable it will become. Not all at once, but incrementally. Get busy.

Where do I start on the FamilySearch Family Tree?

One of the first questions I get from patrons who come into the Brigham Young University Family History Library is "Where do I start?" Well, I have a good answer: the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. Since nearly all of the patrons at the BYU Family History Library are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, if they log in to the Family Tree, they will immediately have an idea of how much has been done on their particular family lines.

So, now you are sitting in front of a computer screen (or iPad or whatever) looking at your family history on the Family Tree? What next? Here are my suggestions in a series of relatively easy steps.

Step One: Get acquainted with your family.

Most people know their parents and other immediate family members but start to fuzz out with great-grandparents and further back. The most common question I ask people as they start out with the Family Tree is "Who was the first person in your family to join the Church?" We talk so much lately about "pioneers" you might be surprised at how many people do not know the answer to this question. If they do know the answer, it is usually on their surname line and once we wander off the surname line, they usually do not even recognize the names of their ancestors.

We have an interesting culture in the Church. We profess to have fundamental religious beliefs about the need to "do work for our ancestors" but we usually know very little about most or all of them. Try this with the next person you talk to in the Church. Ask them to name all eight of their great-grandparents and where they were born. You will soon discover what I am writing about.

Step Two: Follow your family lines back to see what is in the Family Tree.

This is pretty simple also. All you do is click back on different lines until you run out of names. You may find some that go "back to Adam." By the way, this is a dead giveaway that the information you have in your family lines is inaccurate. I'll skip the back to Adam discussion in this post, I have written about that issue too recently in the past. But the idea here is to get an idea about how far back in time your family lines have actually been researched and not just copied. Here are some further suggestions concerning what you might find.
Lines ending in the 1900s -- This means your family has been the subject of very little research and usually means that you or your parents or grandparents were the first to join the Church. You have immediate opportunities to do research.

Step Three: Look carefully at the details.
One of the first indications that there is a lot of research that can be done is the absence of any source citations. As you go back on line in time, you should look at the individuals to see if anyone has added sources. If not, you can assume that the information is questionable and not complete. If you are inclined to find names for submission to the Temple, this is a good place to start doing research. My family's collective experience is that as we add sources and correct the information in the Family Tree, we find more people to include that have been overlooked. Watch for children's birth dates with gaps of more than three years. Watch for birth, marriage and death dates that do not make sense. Look for the warning icons from FamilySearch. Also, you should be adding all the appropriate record hints supplied by the program. However, make sure you have the right names, dates and, most importantly, places. Do not attach sources that do not make geographic sense.

Step Four: Start your research.
As you get to know your extended family, you will begin to realize that some of the ancestral lines have been neglected over the years. The reason was usually because records were not available. Well, the records are very likely available now and these previous dead ends can be extended, sometimes with amazing results. To do this, you may actually have to take some classes or seek help in a Family History Center or Library. Get busy, this is where your research will pay off.

Family History research can be very rewarding. But you need to do the work to reap the benefits.

What Software Programs Should I be Using?

I just wrote some of my comments about the recently released Users Choice Awards from Louis Kessler's GenSoftReviews.com website on Genealogy's Star. My comments were directed to the general genealogical community. But I did have a few more observations to make that are directed at those involved in family history in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

One of the great advantages to going to a large genealogy conference, such as the upcoming RootsTech 2016 Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah is the ability to view, learn about and talk to the various venders of software programs. One inexplicable reality of RootsTech 2016 and all of the preceding annual conferences is the fact that some well-reviewed software programs have never been mentioned nor have the developers made any appearance at the RootsTech conferences.

Another interesting observation is that some of the most prominent participants in the conference have programs that receive bad reviews or at least do not have many positive reviews. The availability and advertising of a product does not determine its utility or suitability for anyone's individual needs. Generally, the price of genealogical software is very low in comparison to other purchases we make on a regular basis. I have discussed the contrast between the cost of purchasing genealogical products and the cost of say, attending sporting events, in the past. I did have an interesting encounter this past week or so when I was asked to come over to a friend's house and "look at why his printer wasn't working." He had purchased a used printer at a surplus property disposal auction several years ago. As a result of an operating system update, his printer was no longer recognized by the upgraded operating system and the manufacturer of the printer had stopped supporting the printer driver for his particular model. I spent quite some time with him trying to convince him that although his printer still worked fine (it made a good test print) it was useless for his needs to connect to his computer. The irony of the situation was that his printer was one of the least expensive models and the sticking point, that he repeated many times was that he had just bought a "new" toner cartridge for the printer.

Now, I have seen this same situation repeated over and over again and I will probably see it happen even more times in the future. Technology changes. Hardware and software becomes obsolete even when it continues to operate. The danger is that, like my friend, it can stop working at very inopportune times, like when you just bought a new toner cartridge. By the way, a brand new comparable printer to the one owned by my friend could be purchased for under $150 so it is also notable that he bought the printer used as it was being replaced by the institution that sold it to him.

From this standpoint, the most telling fact about this year's User Choice Awards from GenSoftReviews.com is the inclusion of "unsupported" programs such as the venerable and practically indestructible Personal Ancestral File. Many members of the Church view the programs and procedures implemented by FamilySearch and hence the Church in general as canonical when, in fact, they are just examples of the most recent technology at the time. As I have pointed out many times in the past, Personal Ancestral File (PAF) was discontinued by FamilySearch (to many users "the Church") in 2002, now more than thirteen years ago and yet, it is still listed as receiving ranking in the top User Choice Awards for 2015.

The arguments in favor of PAF are by and large nonsensical. The reality is that this one program has probably been the cause of losing more genealogical data than any other program. We are still getting people bringing in old PAF data files on floppy disks for retrieval. It is becoming harder and harder, not yet quite impossible, to resurrect this old data.

What genealogical software programs should you be using? One of my basic criteria for using a program is the ability to transfer data from that program to an online family tree and particularly to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. That's it folks. That is where I start. I would love to use some of the really great genealogy programs out there but with the amount of data I have to deal with, I choose to use programs that facilitate making corrections to and entering data into the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. So, look at the reviews and see who does a good job of transferring your data to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree.

There is never going to be a last word on the subject of software and hardware. Technology will continue to change and I will continue to change which programs I use and how I use them. Read the reviews. Think about doing your family history and look for the software and hardware tools that will do the best job for what you need.

The Challenges of a New Year for Genealogy

Sansumaria at en.wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons

We are all aware of transitions. The New Year always seems to be a time for reflection and evaluation. Many make new resolutions or renew old ones. Personally, my genealogy work expands as time goes on. Some times I feel like I am trying to bail the ocean with a spoon, but once in a while, I realize my spoon has turned into a Bucyrus RH400 Hydraulic Shovel and I am making some progress. As I look around, I see a lot of unfinished business from this past year and even some that has accumulated over the past few years. Here are some of the goals, resolutions of whatever that I see are needed and are still challenges to me and in some cases to the entire genealogical community.

1. For years we have talked about the need for an adequate method of moving genealogical data from one program or venue to another. The general consensus is that the old GEDCOM standard is no longer a viable method of moving data. In addition, the wholesale transfer of pedigrees across program boundaries has resulted in the movement of bad data as well as good and has promoted duplication of effort. We need a common denominator in genealogy; a way to transfer all of the information we have on a particular individual from one program to another program without the loss of sources, attached media, notes, and any other pertinent comments. This could be accomplished in a variety of ways and does not necessarily involve any of the individual programs changing their proprietary formats. We can translate languages by computer, let's work on translating data files.

2. FamilySearch.org needs to finally resolve the inherited data problems inherited from new.FamilySearch.org in the Family Tree. There is still a massive overburden of unresolved duplicates and data limitations. Those of us outside of FamilySearch can take care of the duplicates if we are given the opportunity, but every year goes by with promises that there is solution right around the corner and the corner never shows up. The new features and add-ons to the Family Tree are helpful, but fundamentally adding an enhanced search capability and then telling me that I cannot merge an obvious duplicate is pretty frustrating and questions the integrity of the entire database of 1.1 billion names.

3. We need a way to gain access to information that does not involve supporting governments and other organizations around the world. No one owns my or your ancestors. The actors in this international drama include everyone from local societies and repositories to national governments. Why should I be required to pay for vital genealogical record information about my own family? We talk about all sorts of human rights, isn't there a human right to know your own parentage and family history? At every turn, we have public and private entities that want to make money from my desire to find my family. I certainly realize that information has monetary value in our global society, but it is fundamentally unfair to say that because I am rich or famous I can have professionals find my ancestry and broadcast it on TV for a profit and because I am poor, I cannot afford to find my own parents.

4. Genealogy is being cast as a populist movement that includes everyone. No where is this movement more evident than with those who would like to include the young in recognizing their heritage and becoming involved with their family. In this, I am reminded of an ongoing dispute between the cattle ranchers and those who manage government lands in the Western United States. One day, when I was near the end of a long and arduous hike in the Pariah Wilderness Area, we were planning on refilling our water supply at a prominently marked spring. When we arrived at the Spring we found that it was ruined by hundreds of cows and their very very evident droppings. The water was useful for the cows but by allowing the cows to have free access to the water, it was effectively ruined for those who did not happen to be cows. We need to recognize the tremendous effort that the dedicated genealogists have made over the years to seek out their families. We need to preserve the high quality and pureness of the work done by experienced researchers and not ruin their work and prevent them from doing the research that they know how to do, simply because we want to make genealogy more popular. In the case of this valuable Spring in the desert of Northern Arizona, the need to water cows should be weighed against the need to preserve the wilderness. In the case of the Spring, perhaps both interests should have been considered and the cows given water without destroying the Spring itself. I hope you see the analogy. Let's not denigrate our experienced genealogists and make their lives seem useless at the expense of attracting new, unexperienced and untaught people.

5. We need to do more than give lip service to family history. I am constantly bombarded with stories from dedicated family historians about the antagonism and even active persecution they suffer from family members and others. In some societies, the Tribal Historian has a prominent position and is given the respect and consideration needed to preserve the traditions and genealogy of the tribe. In our own Western and most U.S. society, family historians are barely tolerated. At a New Years Eve gathering where my "status" as a family history practitioner was acknowledged, there were several very negative comments, not about me, but about the fact that family history was something to be avoided. This is particularly true among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints although the attitude is not limited to members. If we value families, then that value needs to extend to our heritage. I don't necessarily need any help from those who surround me, but I do need to be able to do my family history without active opposition.

That is probably enough of a list to get started on for the New Year. Here is what I am going to do.

1. I am going to keep researching and extending my family lines with basic research supported by adequate source citations.
2. I am going to keep writing, teaching classes, assisting individuals in finding their families, making videos, participating in webinars and doing everything I can think of to advance the cause of good family history research around the world.
3. I am going to keep doing oral history interviews and accumulating and preserving our individual and cultural heritage.
4. I am going to record as much information as I can possibly accumulate in a way that it can be preserved for the future.
5. I am going to continue to write my own personal history as I have done since 1975,

That should keep me busy for while.