RLP 131: Grafting Family Branches Part 1

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 131 Grafting Family Branches, part one. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, The Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (41s):
Let’s go, Hi everyone. And welcome to the show. I’m Nicole Dyer, co-host of the podcast, and I’m here with my mother accredited genealogists, Diana Elder. Hello, Diana.

Diana (56s):
Hi, Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (58s):
I’m doing great. What have you been reading and working on lately?

Diana (1m 2s):
Well, I finished up a client project, which felt good, so everything is done from 2020, and now I am going forward and figuring out my schedule for 2021, which is kind of exciting and fun. And I’ve been reading Mastering Genealogical Documentation by Tom Jones. I’ve had that on my shelf ever since it was published and I’ve referenced it a lot, but sometimes these basic books, I just like to go back and read from cover to cover and remember all the different things that I had read before or something speaks to me in a new way. So before I had highlighted with a yellow marker and this time I’m highlighting with a red pencil and it’s so interesting, the different things that are jumping out to me, just because I’m more experienced now or I’ve worked on something and it clicks finally.

Diana (1m 49s):
So that’s been kind of fun. I just read a little bit every day trying to get my source citation, documentation knowledge, where I want it to be. I think we just are always learning.

Nicole (2m 0s):
I loved that book. It was nice to really understand the underlying principles behind documentation. Okay, well, before we talk about our subject of the day, which is Pruning and Grafting the Family Tree, we have a couple of announcements, just a reminder that if you join our newsletter, you can get an email from us every Monday with our latest news and coupons if there’s any sales. Also, we wanted to remind you about the launch of our Research Like a Pro with DNA e-course, which is an independent study version of our Research Like a Pro with DNA study group. And if you’re interested in learning more about that, just go to familylocket.com/shop.

Diana (2m 41s):
All right. Well, we are hoping to work with many of you in our courses, so exciting to be starting the DNA e-course. But today we are going to talk about our family trees. And I think January is a great time to be talking about this because it’s the new year and looking at things with new eyes. And especially if you’ve been listening to our podcasts and learning about the Research Like a Pro method, you’re maybe thinking you should go back and look at some of your past research. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Some of the past research that we did when we were just beginning our genealogy and a really big mistake that we made, it’s going to be fun.

Diana (3m 26s):
This is a two-part series. And in the next episode, we’ll do the full case study. So let’s just introduce our research subject and this was my second great-grandmother and my great-grandfather’s death certificate had stated his mother’s name was Elizabeth Welch, but on the 1870 and 1880 census records, her name was Melissa. That’s always so confusing when you have two different names, we’re taught that we use the most recent records and then we work backwards. And so that death certificate was from 1956.

Diana (4m 6s):
And so we just decided that her name was Elizabeth Welch. And we found a census of an Elizabeth Welch and the right age, and the census records had given her birthplace of South Carolina and so when we found and Elizabeth in the family of Meredith and Susanna Welch in South Carolina, we added Meredith and Susanna to our family tree and kept on working on that Welch line. And Meredith’s line went back several generations. And so we added that all to our tree.

Nicole (4m 39s):
We really didn’t have any information about that line beyond Dock Harris’s death certificate, where he said his mother’s name was Elizabeth Welch. That was really our starting point information. So that is a challenge when you’re starting point information maybe is a little bit different.

Diana (4m 56s):
I think our red flag was that her name was Melissa in both of the censuses. And the problem with this case also was that she died right after the birth of Dock. He was the last of several children. So he really never knew his mother. He didn’t know anything about her except for what he was told by his family. And so everything would have been secondary information coming from him, right? Yeah. One of the red flags was that her name was Melissa in the two census records, but we have seen so many times in the census records that people go by nicknames or that they go by their middle name in one census record and then their first name in the next.

Diana (5m 41s):
And I’ve even seen the same family enumerated in the same year. You know, two enumerations, like two weeks apart where everybody’s names were different depending on who was giving the information. So we know that names can be a little tricky as well. So I’m just saying all that, that we were not really bad researchers in attaching her to that family

Nicole (6m 5s):
But we were beginners. And so I was like a teenager when I did this, so it’s not surprising that I made a mistake, but it is really interesting to examine it now and to see some of the points where we could have said, Hmm,

Diana (6m 22s):
More research is needed here. Yeah.

Nicole (6m 25s):
Attaching a child from 1850 census to a grown person, we just need to do a little more correlation,

Diana (6m 35s):
A lot more correlation in this case, right? So it’s okay, we all learn. But before we go on to our case study, which will be in part two, or we really talk about how we discovered the true parents of our Melissa Elizabeth Welch. We’re going to talk in this episode a little bit more about family trees. We’ve got two different kinds of family trees. We have the collaborative family trees where anyone can share information. And there are two main ones, the FamilySearch family tree and WikiTree. And we love FamilySearch family tree. I know a lot of people get frustrated because information does get changed, but I love the idea that I don’t have to do everything that other people are out there helping to research and make it better.

Diana (7m 25s):
And we do have some ideas about how to make sure that your information on the family search family tree stays intact. So we’ll share some of that, but Nicole, I know you’ve done some work on the WikiTree.

Nicole (7m 39s):
It’s great. And one of the great things about it is that it requires you to add in source citation for every person that you add. So it really is a good reminder that we shouldn’t be adding unsourced information to trees like this because other people will want to know where we got our information.

Diana (7m 59s):
Yeah. And I think that’s one of the frustrating things on FamilySearch. When you see a relationship and there’s no source proving that relationship, there’s nothing written in the summary or there’s no report attached. There’s just nothing to verify that. And so those are the links that we need to take it upon ourselves to find some source material and do some work to verify, especially if it’s one of our mainline ancestors and we are building our trade back because once you attach an ancestor and it’s the wrong ancestor, that’s going to attach a bunch of other ancestors that are incorrect.

Diana (8m 40s):
So besides the collaborative trees online, we also have online trees that we control. And these are trees that we put on websites like Ancestry or MyHeritage, Find My Past, lets you put a family tree on there as well. So let’s just go through each one of these and talk a little bit about why it would be helpful to have a tree there. So what do you think about the Ancestry trees?

Nicole (9m 5s):
Ancestry trees are great because they can be public or they can be private and then can even add another layer of security with the private and non searchable option. So they really give you a lot of options for that. Another thing that’s great about Ancestry trees is that you can have an unlimited number of different trees. So this is really helpful. If you are working on different family lines or you are collaborating with various cousins and they share a tree with you, or if you are making a tree just to go along with one DNA test from like your uncle that shows off his ancestors, it’s really great.

Nicole (9m 46s):
I love the ability to have these multiple family trees for different purposes.

Diana (9m 52s):
I totally agree. I have got so many different trees on my Ancestry account and a lot of them have been shared with me, but it’s really helpful to go to a new tree or to be able to create a different tree. And we also know that on Ancestry Thrulines, the DNA tool uses family trees to give us suggestions for common ancestors for DNA matches. And so this ability to have a lot of trees on Ancestry for everyone does give us a lot of hints and a lot of clues, but we also have to be careful of those. So we just have to know going into it. There are really great things about the trees that we have to realize. they may not always be accurate.

Nicole (10m 35s):
Yes. And one of the things that we did was share our conclusion about Elizabeth Welch being the daughter of Meredith on our Ancestry tree. So that was a problem because now I still see that conclusion on other people’s Ancestry trees.

Diana (10m 50s):
I know it was so sad, when you’re the source of incorrect information. I also did that with my Rachel Cox and put her parents out there as James and Susan Cox. And I still see that a little bit too. So, you know, from our personal experience, we realized that we had done some research and thought we were doing good research and put something out there, but it was inaccurate. So it could be the very same way with other researchers. And you know, don’t beat yourself up too much if you’ve done this. Or if you find someone else that has done this, don’t beat them up too much. Just realize that often we’re just doing the best we can. And if we find something that’s inaccurate, we can kindly let people know all about collaboration.

Nicole (11m 33s):
Yes. I even contacted one of our DNA matches on the side and I’m working on finding more about the Welch’s, you know, and they were like, yes, we have a lead on the parents of Melissa and sent me a print out of our ancestry tree from a long time ago, Meredith like, oh yeah, that’s wrong.

Diana (11m 58s):
Yeah. It’s great. When you see your own research thrown back at you, especially if it’s incorrect. Well, that’s what we’re doing this podcast talking about these family trees, because this problem is not going to go away with all the online trees and we just all have to be responsible genealogists. All right, let’s go on and talk a little bit about the trees on MyHeritage. So if you are using MyHeritage, maybe for DNA or for research, you can also create a tree and it’s set up a little bit different than Ancestry trees. You create family websites and you can also have multiple family trees on MyHeritage and their DNA tool theory of relativity uses the family trees to connect DNA matches.

Diana (12m 44s):
And it gives you several different paths to a common ancestor, which I really like. They don’t just say, this is the only possible path. And that’s of course, based on all the different trees that are out there because sometimes people have a little bit different path and it enables you to do some real thinking and analysis to decide how this connection works and what looks like it’s the most accurate.

Nicole (13m 7s):
Yeah. That is a really useful feature.

Diana (13m 10s):
Well, let’s talk also about our own personal database because we should be keeping something ourselves. We shouldn’t just be relying on our online trees. And I teach this all the time because we want to have it in a place that we completely control. You control your Ancestry tree or your, MyHeritage tree or your Find My Past tree to a certain extent, but it is hosted by their website. So if we have purchased or downloaded a free version of a personal database, like Family Tree Maker, Roots Magic, Legacy Family Tree, or Ancestral Quest, then we own our own family tree.

Diana (13m 53s):
That’s living on our computer and it’s up to us to make sure that we’ve backed it up and that we’ve taken care of it, but there are so many advantages to having a personal database. And I think we can get a little bit reliant on the online trees because they are so easy to keep up and add sources too. And they’re so fun to work with that. We don’t want to forget about having our own personal database, but there are a lot of advantages to having one. But do you think about that?

Nicole (14m 26s):
Yeah. I tend to really rely on my online trees, but personal databases are really important and I’m glad we have one. I think I kind of rely on you to keep it up. Sorry.

Diana (14m 39s):
That’s okay.

Nicole (14m 41s):
But it is nice to have the ability to collaborate and that’s what we used Ancestral Quest for, for so many years, because we could check out the file and make changes to it. So it was nice to have that. And then of course we love Family Tree Maker for the ability to sync with our Ancestry tree that we share. So that’s kind of an awesome bonus as well. So each one has different features that are wonderful. We’ve tried all of them and they’re all great. Legacy is a really powerful one that has a lot of really helpful features for locality research and suggesting different record types. And yeah, there’s just so many pros and cons to each one

Diana (15m 19s):
There really are. And whenever I teach about this, I just give the suggestion that you really need to research which program you want to use just as much as you research your family. You know, make a list, download the free versions, they all have our free version except for Family Tree Maker, and try it out, you know, maybe do a little GEDcom and import it into each one. And then see if you like how the family tree looks within each program and try out some of the reports and the research tools. We all have a little bit different brain and way of looking at things. And so some things will speak to us more than others.

Diana (16m 2s):
And it’s really fun because on our Facebook group, we have a dedicated Research Like a Pro Facebook group for those who’ve purchased the book or in the course or study group. And so I did a little poll to ask people which one they’re using. It was really interesting to read all the responses. I think that it was split between Family Tree Maker, Legacy Family Tree, and Roots Magic for the three most popular and everyone had different ideas. And a lot of people had migrated back and forth between different ones and tried different ones and finally settled on something. So, you know, just try them out, decide what’s really important to you. The reason why we’ve settled on Family Tree Maker is, because that syncs with Ancestry really, really easily.

Diana (16m 47s):
And you may want to be able to sync with FamilySearch or with both of them. So you have to just look at the features, decide what’s most important to you. But one of the things that I think is really helpful is storing information for living relatives. And this has really helped me as I have discovered some DNA connections because when I first started doing this, my dad had written letters to all of his family members and I had all these letters and family group sheets of living people that, you know, these families and I just entered it all into my Ancestral Quest. And so I had really good descendency and I still go back and use that old file on Ancestral Quest, looking for descendants.

Diana (17m 32s):
Sometimes when I uploaded that to Ancestry, they all became just noted as living. So now I’m trying to make the connections there, but sometimes I have to go back to my old file.

Nicole (17m 41s):
Oh, that’s interesting. But it is nice, and you can in Ancestry also marked people as living. So you could still use Ancestry for living descendants and just mark them as living and then they’re not shown to anybody else unless you make them like a collaborator on your Ancestry tree.

Diana (17m 58s):
Right. And that is what I’ve been doing is going in and editing that a bit so that I can see that. And some of those people, this was 20 years that ago that I started, some of those people have since passed away. And so obviously need to update some of that descendency and I just do it as I’m working on a DNA project, you know, it would be an overwhelming task to redo everything at once. So just as I’m working with DNA matches and I go figure it out, then I get it all updated. I think we all wish that we would have started with a database that we were going to use for the rest of our lives and not change, but things have changed so much in 20 years. We had no idea when we started in 2002 that we would have this whole digital family tree world online.

Diana (18m 44s):
Right. It was just different. And so as things continue to change, I think we’ll just have to be open to the idea of continuing to care for our family tree and migrating it to the place that makes the most sense for us.

Nicole (18m 55s):
Yeah. And things will change in the future too. And the great thing is that we have the GEDCom file, which allows us to transfer our tree pretty easily. Remember, I know we used to like email people, the files and they would import it into their tree. And I just wouldn’t do that now because you have no idea what’s accurate from their tree.

Diana (19m 16s):
Right. Right. Well, you mentioned GEDcom files and for our listeners, can you just explain what that is again, in case there’s someone that has never heard of that?

Nicole (19m 25s):
Well, the GEDcom file is spelled G E D C O M. And it’s just a type of file that is for family trees. And I’m pretty sure it was developed by FamilySearch.

Diana (19m 36s):
Right. And it’s wonderful because it lets you trade information among all the different databases, all the different websites, and you’ll see it sooner or later, as you’re working on your family tree, you’ll see something like export a GEDcom or import a GEDcom. And so that’s simply what it means. It’s really a great way to share your information. So let’s talk a little bit about tree hints. Tree hints are wonderful and they’re terrible because those can help us to really find great information. But then sometimes it helps us to attach completely inaccurate information and even an entire branch, you know, if we attach a suggested ancestor, that’s incorrect.

Diana (20m 24s):
So again, it all comes back to us and our analysis and using our brain to decide if this hint is really for our ancestor or not. So FamilySearch hints are based on index data and names, dates, and places. So do we ever have people the same name and possibly living in the same location? Of course we do. My favorite example of that is the two Richard Frazier’s that were first cousins born within one year of each other, living in the same county. And they had the same grandparents, but I did have the wrong parents.

Diana (21m 4s):
And so we can’t just assume we have to really make sure that we are looking for people of the same name and doing some really good fan club research, looking at the associates and the neighbors and checking out siblings and aunts and uncles, you know, making sure that these are our people before we’re attaching those hints.

Nicole (21m 26s):
Yes. I think that’s a common error for beginners that we don’t recognize that there could be more people with the same name born in the same place in time, especially when all you have is a state or a country at birth. That’s really broad. So it’s good to think how many people living in this state could have the same name, a lot. A state is a huge place. And with Elizabeth Welch and Melissa Welch, they lived in different counties. Even all we knew is that she had been born in South Carolina. And so we just didn’t have enough information about where she was born to make that connection with confidence.

Nicole (22m 7s):
But we did it anyway.

Diana (22m 10s):
Well, it looked really good.

Nicole (22m 12s):
Seemed like it had to fit right there. Can’t be anyone else named Elizabeth Welch.

Diana (22m 16s):
No, and we didn’t have DNA back then to use either. So couldn’t rely on that to help us. But you know, what a hint was what gave us her marriage record. I had looked, and looked, and looked for her marriage record in the counties of Texas that I knew they were living in. But one day FamilySearch popped up a hint of the marriage record of Melissa Welch and John C. Harris and it wasn’t in totally different county and it was them. It was so exciting to find that, but I felt kind of dumb because I had searched so long and hard for it. And then it popped up as a hint, but that’s the way it works out.

Nicole (22m 56s):
Yeah. And those county records were just being digitized and indexed while you were searching, unless you wanted to go to every single county in that region on the FamilySearch catalog and browse through marriage records. Right. And they never lived in that county and it wasn’t even like a neighboring county. It was like two counties over. So it’s just interesting in Texas how they have those small little counties like that.

Diana (23m 21s):
Yeah. Texas has so many counties. And so you’re right. If we had widened our research and kept looking, we probably would have eventually found it, but she wasn’t our only ancestor, you know, sometimes you say, okay, that’s enough on this ancestor. I gotta move to somebody else because we had my paternal line had so many research places to work. So I think we just decided, we knew she got married we had her on the census with her family, so let’s do an about date and be good with that. But it was fun to actually look at the record.

Nicole (23m 53s):
Yeah. But it didn’t tell us her parents names and it didn’t really give us that much more information except for the fact that she was going by Melissa and not Elizabeth.

Diana (24m 2s):
Right. And the actual date. So you’re right. It did not give us really anything new and exciting, but it’s always good to have the record to wrap up this episode. Let’s just talk a little bit about how we can really verify our family tree, especially if the start of a new year, we want to do something big and exciting and verify those generational links. So the key to doing this really is to develop good research habits. You do have to start with what is known and work your way backwards, documenting each one of those generations. And you want to make sure that those sources are sound and that you’ve got more than just one source or two sources.

Diana (24m 43s):
You know, we just had that one census that we were relying on, which obviously was not nearly enough and that’s a red flag and now we have DNA. So we can also be using DNA to see if we are having our genetic links add up.

Nicole (24m 58s):
Yes. And do you know the reason why I was even working on this and notice the problem was I wanted to continue to extend the Welch line and learn more about them. And so I think FAN club research was kind of what I was doing and just things weren’t adding.

Diana (25m 13s):
Yeah. Yeah. You started getting to get the feeling that maybe this isn’t correct. And I, I think we kind of have that instinct when we’re working on our families that maybe we need to explore this more things just really aren’t fitting or just the opposite that this might be the right path. So we luckily have the Genealogical Proof Standard, which gives us a guide for accurately identifying and linking our ancestors. So the first part of that is reasonably exhaustive research, which would mean we’re not just relying on one record to prove a relationship. And then we have our source citations, which is all about documenting our sources to make sure we know exactly where we found things and know the path to get back to them.

Diana (26m 1s):
And then I think this is really important, especially in this case, those tests of analysis at correlation, putting everything together. And if we have that conflicting evidence, which in this case we did, we had that conflicting name, Melissa and Elizabeth. So, you know, we really didn’t come to a good resolution of that. It just, the cited, it was probably Elizabeth and Melissa was the nickname that kind of was our, our thinking on that. And then writing something up a written conclusion, which we did some written conclusions, you know, I would do some summaries, but I never did the full blown research report with citations.

Diana (26m 44s):
And I think it’s when you start to do more in depth writing that it points up all of your problems in your research.

Nicole (26m 53s):
Yes. And I often when I’m writing recognize holes in my research where I’ve, I haven’t checked to see if there were other candidates to rule them out. So it can really help you realize, oh, maybe this evidence isn’t as strong as I thought, and I need to do a little more.

Diana (27m 10s):
Yeah. Because when you’re writing it down, it seems so much more final. And so if you’re missing something, it really kind of prods you to look for more information.

Nicole (27m 21s):
Yeah. And now we always write a report before we add a conclusion to our family tree, having an objective, you do the research, you write the report and then whatever you feel is you have enough evidence from the report. Then you can add it to your tree. Right?

Diana (27m 34s):
Yeah. It’s really great to finally have a process to lead us through how to verify the family tree. So we are going to wrap up this episode and the next episode, we’re going to talk all about Elizabeth, Melissa Welch and how we discovered the right parents for her.

Nicole (27m 54s):
I can’t wait. All right, everyone. We’ll talk to you again next week. Have a good week.

Diana (28m 1s):
Bye bye. Bye everyone.

Nicole (28m 38s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our book Research Like a Pro a Genealogist Guide on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our Research Like a Pro online course or join our next study group. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com. To share your progress and ask questions join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our eCourse or study group. If you like what you heard and would like to support this podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.