How to Analyze a Record in the FamilySearch Family Tree: Part One -- The Initial Review

This record of Dr. David Shepherd Jr. has no supporting sources in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree website. Although the information appears to be detailed and complete, without sources, everything here is open to question and revision. Further, there is nothing showing that this person is even my relative. The titles of "Dr." and "Jr." make the entry look more certain, but where are the records that would support either designation?

The idea here is to carefully examine and analyze the information in the Family Tree for consistency, supporting sources, reality, and believability. It is also important to make sure the dates and places are standardized and that the places reflect the names of the locations at the time of the events. This process may seem difficult and time-consuming, but with practice, you can spot the problem areas almost immediately.

Some things in the Family Tree readily tell me that no one has been working on this entry with any degree of knowledge of the Family Tree or with any sophistication in genealogical research. They are also indicators that the information may be incomplete or inaccurate. This is both good and bad. It is good because that means that I have an opportunity to do some research and possibly add names to the Family Tree and bad because the amount of clean up necessary is probably overwhelming.

Of course, the first indication of a lack of involvement is the lack of sources does not automatically mean that the information is not correct. Research may support the entries or change them.

The lack of sources even more significantly shows that this entry has, so far, been neglected because there is a whole page of Record Hints waiting to be processed.

Here is the present status of Dr. Shepherd's family.

The blue icons show the availability of Record Hints. The purple icons indicate that there are no records and the red icons show serious data errors. It also appears, from the temple icons,  that someone has come through this part of the Family Tree and harvested the "green icons" but has yet to complete the temple work.

As I examine the entries further, I see a long list of alternate "Birth Names."

This is one of clearest indicators of the lack of attention to these entries. As I have written many times, these "Birth Names" are a remnant from the historical contributions to FamilySearch and its predecessors over the past hundred years or so. They are usually either inaccurate or duplicative. In some cases, not apparent here, these entries should be modified to reflect nicknames or other real alternative names. But in their present form, they should be deleted.

If you are unfamiliar with any of the procedures to work with the Family Tree at this level, I suggest you refer to The Family History Guide for step-by-step instructions.

Why do I care? My experience has shown that as I become involved in doing research on these parts of the Family Tree, I will inevitably find additional missing ordinances and individuals and can add them in.

So, the first steps are almost too obvious: standardize and clean up the entries and then evaluate and add in all of the available sources if the Record Hints turn out to be valid. Focusing on Dr. Shepherd, this is exactly what I started to do. Remember to correct or add in any information found in those sources.

Where did all this information come from if there are no sources? I am aware that there is a surname book about the family but at this point, I have yet to discover a copy anywhere. I speculate at this point that any such book has likely included this Vermont family in with Shepherds from Virginia or elsewhere, but perhaps not.

I intend to "clean up" this family and report on my progress. Stay tuned.

Serious FamilySearch Family Tree Challenges

It would seem from this view of the FamilySearch Family Tree that the entries are rather ordinary. Most of the entries appear to be somewhat complete and although there are some evident data errors with red icons, the rest of it appears to be manageable. Appearances can be deceiving. I spent two full days working on sorting it out just a few of the data problems with these families. I have not even begun to unravel the problems.

I have previously done some research on David Sheppard (b. 1750, d. 1832). The research was sufficient to establish in fact that his parents were unknown and to confirm his death date and place of burial. The family had been previously confused with one in Connecticut where the father had the same name. The main issues that remained concerned his children. Here is a screenshot of the family as it now appears:

Some of the children are shown to have been born in Castleton, Vermont. But two of the children are shown to have been born in Bennington, Vermont, approximately 65 miles away. Further research also shows that some of the family members moved to Geauga County and Cuyahoga County in Ohio in the 1830s. However, there are several large gaps in the family and we can presume that there may be additional children.

Since much of this information comes from traditional sources, i.e. submissions to FamilySearch and its predecessors over the past 100+ years, much of the information that was already in the Family Tree had to be verified with historical records. The real difficulties begin with the next generation. Here is another example:

The existing records show that Henry Sheppard had two wives both of whom he married in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. However, the only child shown to have been born to Henry and his wife Cynthia is shown as being born in Vermont. It is possible but unlikely that the couple traveled over 500 miles from Cuyahoga County to Castleton, Vermont to have a baby only to have the wife die and the husband travel back to Ohio and get married again the next year. This is especially true since Cuyahoga County was only established in 1810. Additionally, construction only began on the Erie Canal in 1817 so all of the travel would've had to have been done overland.

Further, records for Andrew McClain Shepherd, the child, show that he was born in Ohio. However, I've yet to find any record of his birth other than mentions in the US census records.

 These kinds of problems only become evident as I compare the sources attached with the information in the Family Tree. In this case, the connection between Andrew McClain Shepherd and his parents is completely missing. The only connection is that it may have been born in Ohio.

Significantly, every single child in this family has similar problems. The challenge here is that the information appears to be somewhat complete and supported by sources. It is only when the information is carefully examined that the missing information connecting the family members and the dates associated with each of the family members reveals that there is no supporting data for most of the information that has been inferred. For example, the existing information in the record shows that Andrew McClain Shepherd was born in Vermont however the only sources showed his birth in Ohio. The Ohio birth explained the problem of the traveling parents.

These examples show the importance of looking carefully at each source added to the record and correcting and adding the information to the details shown for the individuals. Many of the apparent contradictions can be resolved merely by following this procedure. The challenge, however, in dealing with the Family Tree, is that this procedure has to be applied consistently to every single member of the family. Given the condition of the Family Tree, there is no way to avoid doing this work.

Participating in the Worldwide Indexing Event

https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/participate-2017-worldwide-indexing-event/

October 20th to the 22nd, 2017 will be the annual worldwide indexing event from FamilySearch.org. Instructions for participating in the event are in a blog posted by FamilySearch shown above. The thrust of this year's event is to assist more people and using the new online indexing website. The overall purpose of the event is explained as follows:

As in years past, the purpose of the event will be to unite the international indexing community around the common goal of making more historical records searchable online for free. Last year’s event broke the previous records with more than 100,000 indexers helping to index over 10,000,000 records.

My wife and I recently assisted a large ward youth group in an indexing activity. Because of the web-based program, the activity was a decided success. The activity took place at the BYU Family History Library in two classrooms with computers. The web-based indexing program allowed all of the individuals to participate without having the necessity downloading their program to each computer.  With the now older desktop-based program we would have spent a great deal of time getting the individuals up to speed by downloading programs and then logging in. During the activity, we very much appreciated the features and ease-of-use of the new web-based indexing program.

Temple and Family History Work Open the Heavens

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2017/10/open-the-heavens-through-temple-and-family-history-work?lang=eng

I was particularly impressed with the presentation done by President Russell M. Nelson, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and his wife, Wendy W. Nelson at RootsTech 2017. I was pleased and somewhat surprised to find the entire presentation reproduced in the October 2017 edition of the Ensign Magazine. The article is entitled, "Open the Heavens through Temple and Family History Work."

I commend reading the entire article, but I was most impressed with Sister Nelson's summary near the end of the article. Here is the quote from the article.

Sister Nelson: It is my testimony that however fabulous your life is right now, or however discouraging and heartbreaking it may be, your involvement in temple and family history work will make it better. What do you need in your life right now? More love? More joy? More self-mastery? More peace? More meaningful moments? More of a feeling that you’re making a difference? More fun? More answers to your soul-searching questions? More heart-to-heart connections with others? More understanding of what you are reading in the scriptures? More ability to love and to forgive? More ability to pray with power? More inspiration and creative ideas for your work and other projects? More time for what really matters? 

I entreat you to make a sacrifice of time to the Lord by increasing the time you spend doing temple and family history work, and then watch what happens. It is my testimony that when we show the Lord we are serious about helping our ancestors, the heavens will open and we will receive all that we need.

I have been asked many times how I can write and do so many things. I attribute everything I have been able to do for the last 35 years or so to my involvement in family history. As my wife and I contemplate leaving our home to spend a year on a full-time mission, I continue to reflect on the influence and blessings that have come into my life because of my interest in and work in family history. I hope to be able to continue that work as long as I live.

Read the entire article.

Changes to the FamilySearch Family Tree

You may or may not have noticed, but there have been several recent changes to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. The changes are not obvious but do alter the menus and selections. Several items have been moved and/or renamed. The view selections have been moved from a menu bar to a pull-down menu.

In addition, the "Recents" menu has been moved from an arrow link next to the Person menu and been given its own menu item. In addition, the "Options" menu has been moved and relocated.

As with all evolving websites, the FamilySearch.org website will continue to change. This is a good reason to keep writing and re-making my webinar presentations.

Limitations on FamilySearch Family Tree Ordinance Crawler Applications

Programs that find green icons or temple opportunities in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree have become very popular recently. In the FamilySearch.org App Gallery, there are 47 apps listed under the category of "Tree Analyzing." Many of these utility programs are the "favorite" programs for those who have only a casual involvement in family history. From what I see around me, whole Wards and even some Stakes, base their efforts at promoting family history on using one or another of these programs.

These Tree Analyzing programs are called "Ordinance Crawlers" by the programmers who support and maintain the Family Tree. In a recent newsletter dated September 29, 2017, aimed at developers of programs that use the Family Tree, i.e. the developers of the ordinance crawler programs, FamilySearch noted that certification and approval of additional such programs would be discontinued until further notice. This action is being taken because of the high load that these third-party ordinance crawler programs are placing on the internet resources available to FamilySearch.

From my own standpoint, the value of these ordinance crawler programs is marginal in advancing the integrity, value, and growth of the Family Tree. First of all, they all depend to a greater or lesser degree of the accuracy of the data already in the Family Tree. Some of these programs are better than others in determining the validity of opportunities found. In many cases, the "opportunities" turn out to be more accurately an indication that serious research is needed in a particular family. The Family Tree program is constantly becoming more sophisticated in analyzing the validity of the entries. Red warning icons that indicate serious errors in the data are increasingly common. Finding the overlooked or undone temple ordinances in the program is becoming more and more difficult.

When the Family Tree was first released and for several years after its introduction as a replacement for the new.FamilySearch.org program, green ordinance availability icons were abundant. However, in many cases, their abundance was an illusion caused by the Family Tree program's inability to accurately determine the existence of duplicate individuals. Beginning in June of 2017, that limitation in the Family Tree was eliminated to a great degree and millions of duplicates were merged. This affected the number of apparent ordinance opportunities because many of those duplicates showed opportunities when completed ordinance work was recorded on two or more duplicate individual records in the Family Tree. For example, one copy of an individual may have some of the required ordinances and another copy might have other completed ordinances. When the two copies were merged, all of the ordinances showed as completed.

The issue of duplicate entries in the Family Tree still exists and to some extent, as information is added to the entries in the Family Tree, additional duplicates can still be found in great numbers. By adding information to the entries from research into the available records, more and more duplicates become evident. I have written about these "Ghost Records" on the Family Tree over the past few months. In one sense, the ordinance crawlers reduce the number of green icons by finding those that are available, but in another, real sense, they also increase the number of duplicate ordinances performed and effectively hide the multiple duplicate entries that exist when research adds information to the existing entries.

From the standpoint of FamilySearch, the "duplicate issue" has been solved. The Family Tree now detects most of the obvious duplicates. But the duplicates that appear only after research has added new information to existing individuals is still hidden and very extensive despite assurances from FamilySearch to the contrary. I have very recently spent hours working through the duplicates for one family that only appeared when I added information obtained from research and I am certain that I will have the same experience many times in the future.

Now, back to ordinance crawlers. These programs give an appearance of the fact that names for temple ordinance are already identified and waiting to be found in the existing entries in the Family Tree. A very few Family Tree users take advantage of these programs to do serious research. But in my own experience, I have found them to be less useful than simply spotting research opportunities and beginning research.

If the emphasis on working with the Family Tree was changed from "mining" to research, perhaps the problem of the overuse of the FamilySearch resources would be solved. Relying on these types of programs, not a solution to validating and improving the Family Tree.

Standardization: A Controversial Issue

My recent blog post entitled, "USA vs. United States: Standardization?" resulted in some more than ordinary long and involved comments. I am not going to reproduce the lengthy comments in this post, but I do recommend that you read what the commentators have to say. Reading the comments might help to understand the issues I am about to discuss here.

First of all, anyone can impose their own standard in the context of their own activities. Most of us have played a game where the participants agreed on certain rules in advance of the game. We have also been confronted with the statement, "This is my game so you must play by my rules." In this regard, the critics of "standardization" are missing the point. Standards are not generally imposed for the benefit of the users, it is imposed to benefit the supplier, manufacturer or whatever. Granted, some standards do benefit users, such as safety standards in automobiles and electronics, but most are merely ways to facilitate commerce.

Genealogy is not immune to standards. Many of us, who submitted paper family group records to the predecessors of FamilySearch realize that those family group records had to be submitted through Ward and Stake reviewers before they could be submitted. The rules for abbreviations of both places and dates were rather complex. Those particular rules were imposed by the limitations of the physical spaces on the forms. Today's standards from FamilySearch are aimed at improving consistency and communication in a worldwide forum.

Because I speak two languages fluently and for a number of other reasons, I am personally very aware of differences in language standards. For example, because I learned most of my Spanish language in South America and Central America, I have no difficulty in understanding people from those countries. However, I do have substantial difficulty in understanding people from parts of Mexico. In addition, because of my university training in Spanish, I am accustomed to certain standards. The difficulty in understanding people from parts of Mexico is similar to the difficulty I have an understanding some British English accents and those from the southern states of the United States. Broadcast companies usually recognize this problem and have adopted "standardized English." It just so happens that most of the broadcasters in the United States standardize on the English spoken in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Now, if we apply my experiences with spoken language into the rules that are used in by FamilySearch.org in the Family Tree, we can see the underlying issues involved in imposing any degree of standardization. You may call some rule a standard, but it only becomes one when a whole lot of people or organizations or companies accept it as a standard.