RLP 278: Other Relationships on FamilySearch

Nicole (0s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 278 Other Relationships on FamilySearch 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 genealogist professional Diana and Nicole are the mother, mother-daughter team at family Locket dot com and the authors of Research Like, a pro A Genealogist guide with Robin Wirthlin. They also co-authored the Companion Volume Research Like a Pro with DNA, join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research, and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.

Nicole (42s):
Today’s episode is brought to you by find a grave.com. The best place to search online for burial information for your family, friends, and famous people. Hi, everyone Welcome to research Like a Pro,

Diana (52s):
Hi Nicole How, are you doing today?

Nicole (54s):
Great. Just catching up. After getting back from the conference we were at last week, the Association of Professional Genealogist Professional Management Conference. It was so fun to be there with you.

Diana (1m 4s):
It was great and it was really fun to see a lot of our friends and meet new friends and learn a little bit about the professional side of genealogy. It was great.

Nicole (1m 14s):
Our announcements today include our next Research Like, a Pro Webinar series Webinar, and it will be called Origins of Isabella McFall, an early 19th century British immigrant DNA case study presented by Melanie Witt. Isabella McFalls Kin and homeland origins are mostly lost to history. She immigrated to Michigan by 1838 and died there in 1865. Before the advent of death certificates, conflicting records identified England and Scotland as Isabella’s about 1815 birthplace. Though research has not identified her in those country’s collections, DNA analysis uncovered evidence for her origins and produced a specific geographic location for continued documentary research.

Nicole (1m 59s):
This case study features analysis of a composite DNA network graph created in Gfe from the combined matches of three descendants who tested with ancestry DNA. So this should be a fantastic way to learn more about gfe, the Research Like a Pro with DNA process and 19th century US immigration. Also, she’ll be talking about England, Scotland, Ireland, a conflated British identity, Michigan cluster research and other genetic genealogy strategies. We’re excited to have Melanie Whitt from our team come on and do this Webinar. And she is a professional Genealogist who works as a contractor for family Locket for us and for private clients. She earned a master of science with a distinction in genealogical, paleo and heraldic studies from the University of Strath Glide.

Nicole (2m 44s):
She is a accredited as a Qualified genealogist with the Register of Qualified Genealogists in the UK as a product of recent immigration to the us. Her work has a strong international focus in France, Sweden, Germany, and the British Isles. In addition to extensive practice in the Great Lakes and northwest regions of the us, she regularly incorporates DNA analysis in her research and has solved biological family identity cases for clients. She is a graduate of both Research Like, a Pro and Research Like, a Pro with DNA study groups serving as a mentor for the latter. When she’s not researching, Melanie enjoys spending time with her family, eating out, traveling and playing pickleball. So we highly encourage you to join our Research Like, a Pro Webinar series so that you can learn from Melanie.

Nicole (3m 28s):
Also, if you’re considering joining our Research Like a Pro with DNA study group, the next one will be again in February of 2024, and please join us as a peer group to earn complimentary registration. And if you haven’t already, please join our newsletter so that you can get weekly updates on new content that we’re putting out, including new coupons. Have you decided if you’re going to the Roots Tech Conference? If you haven’t, you will want to Register soon. If you Register before November 18th, 2023, you can get a three day pass for $99. After that, the price increases to $109. Roots Tech 2024 will be from February 29th to March 2nd, and we will be there.

Nicole (4m 9s):
So we hope to see you all there.

Diana (4m 12s):
Yes, roots Tech will be here before we know it, and it’s always an exciting conference. Well, for our listeners Spotlight today we have listener Julie LaGrange from Georgia and she is writing in about Kentucky Medical School in 18 hundreds. She says, Research Like a Pro is my absolute favorite podcast. And I listen every week. I get all sorts of great ideas while listening to the show. While listening to this week’s episode, I was intrigued by Nicole’s thought about whether Jacob Klein had gone to Kentucky for medical school, just in case it’s helpful. I do know that Sylvania University in Lexington has a medical school in the early 18 hundreds.

Diana (4m 55s):
It eventually moved to the uk, but in researching my own third time great-grandfather who attended medical school there, I found that database record entries and a directory of students and faculty do still exist and are available online. Wouldn’t it be fun if you found him there? I look forward to joining your research like a Pro study group one of these days when time allows after I retire, maybe well Thank you so much, Julie for sending in that idea. I’ll definitely have to go check that out and see if I can learn more about Jacob Klein and why he went to Kentucky. And we would love to have you join us with the study group.

Nicole (5m 32s):
Well, today we’re talking about Other Relationships on FamilySearch and this is a fun topic. If you’ve done any fan club research or enslaved ancestor research or anytime that you have a person who is associated with your ancestor and do you want to connect them on FamilySearch in their family tree, but you don’t know how well I had this problem A couple of years ago, I completed a proof argument that Louis Tharp was the father of Bathsheba Tharp and I was working on updating the FamilySearch family tree with information and sources that I included in that proof argument. One of the details that I found in a Hawkins County, Tennessee deeded connected Bathsheba’s brother William Tharp to Rebecca Tharp, formerly Rebecca Vernon.

Nicole (6m 18s):
I found Abraham Vernon’s will and it mentioned his widow, Rebecca Abraham’s will also mentioned his Elder brother Nathan Vernon. I wanted to connect Nathan and Abraham as brothers on FamilySearch, but I found that Abraham was not on FamilySearch yet. I did some quick research and found that no one seems to know who Abraham and Nathan Vernon’s father was without adding a man named Mr. Vernon as the father of the men, I couldn’t really think of a way to connect them and I didn’t want to add a new person as their father until I knew who it was, at least a name. So that’s when I noticed the other relationships section of the profile page in the FamilySearch family tree After the vitals section, the other information section and family members section, you will see the other relationships section of the profile page.

Nicole (7m 7s):
If, you click add other relationship, you’ll get a popup with a dropdown list allowing you to select a certain relationship from the list. Many of these options are friend family associates and neighbor fan club type relationships. So if you’ve done fan club research before, you will know how important that can be in determining identities and family relationships. Currently, the options are apprenticeship, employment, enslavement, godparent, household lineage, cap, neighbor and relative. If you select enslavement, the popup then assigns one person as the slave holder and the other person as the enslaved person. You can then add the person by putting in their personal ID number or searching for them by name or you can swap places if they need to be in different spots.

Nicole (7m 55s):
To fit the role labels for Nathan and Abraham Vernon, I selected the relative option for this option, the role labels just say relative above each man. I then added a reason statement showing that Abraham Vernon mentions his older brother, Nathan Vernon in his will.

Diana (8m 13s):
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Diana (9m 0s):
It’s a rewarding way to spend time outdoors while helping others find the burial locations of their loved ones. Well, let’s talk more about this idea of roles in the other relationships section. And most of these are obvious like master and apprentice or head of household and occupant. But what about the lineage gap? So clicking on that revealed the role labels of ancestor and descendant, and that might be really great for you Nicole to use in this case with Abraham Vernon because he was mentioned in his grandmother’s will, Elizabeth Vernon of Chester County, Pennsylvania.

Diana (9m 44s):
And so often we see something like this where the will doesn’t say who Abraham’s father was. And if you are working on FamilySearch and you don’t wanna really do a big research project and you can’t find the information quickly, at least you can add this. You would need to conduct more research to figure out his father, but at least you know his grandmother. So you could add Elizabeth. And then we can do the little symbol that we use for, if we don’t know a maiden name, it’s a bracket dash bracket Vernon. So that’s a signal to us as a researcher that there’s a maiden name that belongs there. And so Elizabeth could be added as Abraham’s ancestor using other relationships even if we don’t know specifically his father.

Diana (10m 32s):
So some additional information Nicole found about Abraham of Hawkins County points to him coming from Pennsylvania. So this could be the same man mentioned as the grandson of Elizabeth Vernon, but if you’re not really sure, you don’t necessarily want to add that information unless you’ve had a chance to do more exhaustive research. So with the brother relationship of Abraham and Nathan Vernon, both men lived in Hawkins County, Tennessee and had several associations. So Nicole felt confident that the Nathan Vernon of Hawkins County was the brother Abraham mentioned in his Hawkins County will.

Diana (11m 13s):
So how great that you were able to add this relationship without having to figure out who their father was. I love this new feature of FamilySearch.

Nicole (11m 23s):
It’s so great to have something to do with that information when you’re putting it in the tree. The other relationships section can be a great tool to help keep track of friends, family, associates and neighbors, otherwise known as the fan club. The people your Ancestors associated with can help identify them if there are people of the same name. Previously on FamilySearch, there was no way to link a person to a neighbor or a relative other than the defined relative relationships in the tree. Now you can link your Ancestors to their fan club. Adding other relationships is especially important in research of enslaved people. The identity of plantation owners where an enslaved person lived and worked is key in determining their surname after emancipation as well as who they married.

Nicole (12m 7s):
So give it a try and I think you’ll like the other relationships tool. So Diana, have you ever had experience with plantation owners and enslaved person research?

Diana (12m 17s):
That is so interesting that we are discussing that today because I just reviewed a report for one of our clients where that was key in tracking enslaved people to connect a man who lived in North Carolina to his daughter who had moved out to Mississippi. And I was just fascinated as I read through the report with the different deeds and probate that mentioned the enslaved people by name, very specific names, and they showed up in both locations. And you know, we always hate to see this whole idea of ownership of a person, but for those who have enslaved Ancestors, that is a key document.

Diana (13m 4s):
That is how you trace your people. And so I love this idea of being able to go in and create a profile, for instance of let’s say Emma was the enslaved woman, and create a profile for Emma and connect her to all the documents that name her. And especially if you’ve done the project and you can prove that you’ve got the slave owner deeding Emma to his children. So often we cannot make the connection between say, north Carolina and Mississippi for a family an an African American family. But if we have the deeds showing those two locations with the Enslavers, then that makes all the difference in the world in trying to figure out a location of birth and telling their stories.

Diana (13m 56s):
So before we had this on FamilySearch, there were a lot of different ways we were trying to do this, and one of those was writing up the deed and putting it out there on the web in hopes that somebody would run across that. But having it all in one place like this on FamilySearch is so much better. So yes, long answer to your question is I have seen so many projects come through where we could absolutely use this to make profiles for the enslaved people and get them connected to places and times and specific families that would really help with the research.

Nicole (14m 34s):
Right. And just adding enslaved people when you find them to the tree can then help when somebody else is searching, you know, the other direction from their family back in time and they know just the first name, maybe where the person lived, and maybe they’ll find by searching in the FamilySearch tree that there’s a profile created for this person who lived on a certain plantation in the right location that they need to look in. So

Diana (14m 60s):
Absolutely. And you know, one of the things is after emancipation, those who had been previously enslaved had to take a surname because they didn’t, they weren’t allowed to have surnames during slavery. And so after emancipation, sometimes they would take the enslavers name, but not always. Sometimes they would just take the name of someone in the county, perhaps a plantation owner who they had never been on that plantation, but they perhaps like that surname. Having them connected to people with surnames helps to, as you say, work forwards and backwards and make more connections.

Diana (15m 42s):
So that’s, that’s such a wonderful thing to do to just start getting in those names and get them into FamilySearch.

Nicole (15m 50s):
Absolutely. I was thinking about also how many times have we had a person living in a family’s household and we didn’t really know who they were, but we want to keep track of them somehow. This is such a great feature for that instance, which happens all the time. Even in your project you’re doing right now for the study group, I know there were some people living in households, right? Wasn’t there one?

Diana (16m 13s):
Yes.

Nicole (16m 14s):
Random person living in the household and you didn’t know exactly how they’re connected?

Diana (16m 17s):
Oh, I still don’t know. That’s right. In my Clumsy, Klein WeatherFords household, there are two Klein children. And then in Jacob Klein’s household, which I think is her brother, there are two other Kleins, and they’re all born in Arkansas. They all have Arkansas roots. And I’ve traced these people to Isard and Fulton County, and I’m trying to make some connections, but that is a fabulous idea to link them up and looking at the different options. I would definitely put them in as household. I’m trying to think what I would do with John c Klein who I think could be a possible father or relative to Clumsy. And probably the best one would be relative or neighbor.

Diana (17m 0s):
I don’t know. What do you think? Can you do two?

Nicole (17m 3s):
Yeah, I was just looking at a FamilySearch article about that. It says, what is the Maximum number of Other Relationships a person can have in family tree? And so it just talks about that, you know, this depends on the relationship type. And then there’s a chart, and for the relative relationship type, you can have up to 20 for each person. And then apprenticeship 50 godparent, 50 enslavement 200 employer 50, neighbor 50, and household 50.

Diana (17m 37s):
Oh, they’ve given you plenty of latitude there. Yeah, that’s a lot you could have that has me really interested in doing this. Now here’s just a fun little email string that I’ve had on a different family. This is the family of your dad’s ancestor, James French. And he had two daughters, Monica French and Mary French. So we come through Mary French and we had seen Mary, she was in an 1835 Catholic census in Barron’s Parish, Missouri with her sister Monica French. And so a person who listened to the podcast or reads our Blog posts had connected the two of us.

Diana (18m 21s):
And this other person had no idea what happened to Mary French. And she sent me all the information about Monica. And because Mary was just showing up in this household as the daughter of James French, she had no way of knowing that this Mary was actually the wife of Ignatius Brian, and that she had remarried who we knew tracking her from our end back exactly what had happened to her. But when you just have a person on a census like that, it’s really hard to go track them because there’s no marriage record for Mary French and Ignatius Bryan. It’s all in probate and you just have to follow the trail and it’s hard to work that other direction.

Diana (19m 6s):
So this might give us a way to get a little bit more connection with people and figure out more things in our family tree.

Nicole (19m 14s):
Right. And you know, I was thinking about the fact that I don’t always go and update the FamilySearch family tree until I’ve kind of come to a stopping point in the research. I’ve finished a report of one phase of my research, and that’s a common time that I like to go and update the FamilySearch tree. And, and we don’t always have all of the answers about that family. You know, often in a research project, we’ll Discover new family members and we don’t really have their place in the family tree figured out. So it’s nice to be able to have a place to put some of these intermediate conclusions where we know these two are related. You know, whether they’re neighbors, brothers, somehow connected, and just have a place to put that so that it can help other people.

Nicole (19m 55s):
And that’s what I love about the FamilySearch family tree is working together and collaborating with others. And although I may not be able to work on Abraham and Nathan Vernon’s father for the next year or two, if somebody else wants to work on that, they can see that I’ve already found that they’re brothers and they can use that as a starting point for a project to find out who the father was.

Diana (20m 17s):
Oh, absolutely. There is a real value in working on a collaborative tree. I know sometimes we get frustrated if things get changed, but we can, we can work through that. And there’s so much value, I think that that outweighs any of the challenges or problems. And we always say, keep your family tree in your own software, your own online ancestry tree or something, and keep your own research notes and Logs and reports. But there’s a lot of value in just getting your research out there, seeing if you can get some connections to help you. We’ve been helped with so many of our cases because we do have our research out there. We talk openly about our research.

Diana (20m 58s):
We have it on our, you know, our, our website in the form of Blog posts and, and we’ve received a lot of help because of that, which has been fabulous. So if you don’t have a website or you’re not doing a podcast, you’re not writing articles, one way you can get your research out there is to put things on FamilySearch and you can upload all sorts of documents. I upload, upload my research reports so people can read my conclusions. You can put on research notes. You don’t just have to put people and dates and and places. You can actually get your thoughts and conclusions out there about them as well, which is very valuable.

Nicole (21m 39s):
Absolutely. All right, well this was fun talking about the other relationships feature at FamilySearch. It’s funny that you mention the struggle that we sometimes have with the FamilySearch family tree being collaborative and that things do sometimes get messed up and we have to untangle them. So join us next week and we will talk about that issue and we discuss un merging a person of the same name who got all merged together in the family surgery. And I’ll tell you how I figured out the best way to unmerge that difficult profile.

Diana (22m 12s):
That sounds great. I can’t wait to hear more about that. All right, well everyone have a great week and we’ll talk to you next time. Bye-Bye

Nicole (22m 19s):
Bye. 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 books, Research Like, a Pro and Research Like a Pro with D on amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also Register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at family Locket dot com slash services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday. Subscribe to our newsletter at family Locket dot com slash newsletter. Please Subscribe rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.