RLP 288: Resolving Conflicts on the FamilySearch Family Tree

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 288 Resolving Conflicts on the FamilySearch family tree. 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 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 the sponsor of today’s episode of Research Like a Pro Is newspapers.com, the largest online newspaper archive.

Nicole (48s):
Hi everyone. welcome to Research Like a Pro

Diana (51s):
Hi. Nicole. how are you today?

Nicole (53s):
You know I’m great. I’ve been doing some newspaper research and just really enjoying finding a lot of articles. What’s interesting is that at first I thought all the articles belong to my research subject, a man with a common name. But then as I started looking at You, know the details of all of the articles, I kind had the question in my mind, how do I know this belongs to my person? So I just did some cursory research for everyone with that name in that state and found there were other people with that name. And so then I started kind of separating the identities of these men of the same name and trying to see which articles from the newspaper could be about which man, which I’ll have to do a separate research project for that.

Nicole (1m 39s):
And I thought You know I’m just gonna create a separate Airtable base because this kind of is its own project and I don’t really want to put all of these records and articles and things that belong to different men into my other Airtable base for my project. So I think I’ll do it separately.

Diana (1m 58s):
I think that’s a good example of how different projects warrant different treatments. You can’t just have one way for doing every single scenario. So that’s a great idea.

Nicole (2m 9s):
Well, What, have you been doing

Diana (2m 11s):
Well? Excited because I got the YDNA results back from my Schultz test taker. Schultz is my maiden name, and I wanted to get the YDNA test done for a Schultz ascendant. And my dad had passed away and his brother had passed away. And so I had to go up to my great grandparents, William Houston Schultz and Dora Alga Roys and find one of their descendants who would agree to take the test. And you would think that that would be pretty easy because they had 10 children, but a lot of those lines had dotted out. There was not anyone who could take the test. And I found ones descendant that would, and he luckily had some sons that could also have taken it, but he agreed too and it was so fun to connect with him.

Diana (2m 58s):
He is my dad’s first cousin, so my first cousin was removed and we got the results back. This line with the surname of Schultz has been traced back to the area that would become Germany wasn’t, of course Germany in the early 17 hundreds, but it has Happle group, it’s EM 35 and looking at the matches, it’s so interesting to see the different countries of origin that these different matches have listed. You know that’s something that you self report. And so we’ve got Ukraine, Kosovo, Albania Unknown, and Austria.

Diana (3m 38s):
So they’re all different. But we’ve definitely got that Eastern European vibe going. So I am very interested to see if we can get more matches down the road. We don’t have anything very close as this, as of this moment, but hopefully we’ll eventually get more and more people. And I’ve applied to be part of the project. There’s a surname project for Schultz and there’s so many different ways of spelling it. So there’s a small little group of these EM 30 fives in that project. So we’ll see what happens. But I’ve done, what I wanted to do was to get the the test done and have it out there.

Nicole (4m 18s):
Well great. I’m so excited to look at the results. So what level of testing did you do Y 67?

Diana (4m 25s):
Well, we actually did Y one 11 and we don’t have any close matches because we have no matches at 111 and we have no matches at 67 markers. Our first matches are at 37 and we have five at 37. But the closest one there is three steps back. So I’m guessing that that is telling me they were two distant to show up as a match in the 67 markers or 111 markers field.

Nicole (4m 56s):
Right. And you can see if that match has upgraded or taken that level of testing. So I’m guessing that some of them have taken 111 but just aren’t showing up as a match at that level.

Diana (5m 6s):
Right, right. Two of ’em said that they had taken it the 67, but they’re not showing up there, so they must be pretty distant. Yeah. But now I need to do some targeted testing of our Schultz line that immigrated to the US ’cause it’s very possible that these test takers did not. There’s, there’s surnames are all looking like Eastern European. They don’t look like US surnames. So very interesting.

Nicole (5m 32s):
Right, and that’s a really helpful thing for people to hear about why DNA matches that You know they don’t stay as a match if they’re not within the threshold for the number of differences allowed at that level. So each level of testing has a number of differences and if you go over that number of differences, they don’t show up as a match. So although they’re a match at the 37 level, they have more differences when you introduce more markers to test. So then they’re not a match anymore at 67. So yeah, I think your analysis is right that they’re probably distant and it would be cool to do more Schultz, descendants, YDNA tests and see how many mutations have occurred over the time that the Schultz family immigrated back in the early 17 hundreds.

Nicole (6m 17s):
Right.

Diana (6m 18s):
It would be great. Yeah, they immigrated, I believe about 1750 or so right around there, give or take, 20, 30 years definitely before the revolution years so earlier than that. And they were part of the Pennsylvania German group, which is why we have records for them because if you remember from our previous podcasts where we learned that they had to take oaths of allegiance, and so we actually have records that shows their names and their ages and when they came. So that’s why this is one of my immigrant lines that I actually know more about, which is fabulous.

Nicole (6m 56s):
That’s a fun thing to be working on. Our announcements today are that we have the Webinar for January coming up, and that will be in just a few days from now, Saturday, January 20th. The presenter is Amanda Sherwin. She will be telling about her case who was Robert Stewart’s wife using DNA clusters and genealogical research. And so that will be a great Webinar. And if you haven’t purchased our Webinar series for 2024, you can purchase that at any time. The monthly case studies feature the Research Like a Pro process and the Research Like a Pro with DNA process. And the recordings will be available for everyone who purchases those for lifetime access.

Nicole (7m 39s):
And you can also read the report of the presenter as the syllabus. Also the next Research Like, a Pro with DNA study group begins February 7th and you can continue to register until February 1st and then we will close registration. So we hope that you will join us and take some time to work on your own family research. If you’re a professional and you’re always working on others research, this is a great opportunity to have some time to work on your own project. And it’s just such a gratifying feeling to end with a research report that you’ve written about the progress you made in this phase of research. Even if you don’t solve your research objective, you at least will gain a new hypothesis or complete some records that you had wanted to search for that objective.

Nicole (8m 30s):
If you haven’t joined our newsletter yet, that comes out every Monday and you receive an email from us with a new blog post, a new podcast episode, and any new videos that we’ve added to our YouTube channel. So feel free to sign up for that and for upcoming conferences, we hope to see you at Roots Tech February 29th through March 2nd, and we will both be there and I’ll be teaching some workshops about Airtable. So hopefully if you’re interested in learning more about Airtable, you can sign up for those workshops and Diana will be there too. So we’ll both be teaching and we’ll have a booth and we look forward to seeing you.

Diana (9m 5s):
Yes, we are excited about that. Roots Tech is always such a fun conference, so much excitement there and so much learning available. And I’m excited because this year I get to do a Webinar. So for people who have registered but won’t be there in person, I’ll also be able to teach you. So that’s going to be really fun. Well, today we are talking about what to do when you’re researching an ancestor on FamilySearch on the family tree and you run into conflicting information for something, a date, place, or even identity. So we have some choices. We can ignore the conflicts and sometimes we hope someone else will figure it out or we can randomly choose a fact and decide to use that or You know.

Diana (9m 50s):
The best scenario is we actually do more research and resolve the conflict. And I ran into this challenge when I was researching and writing about my second great-grandmother, Harriet, Hugget, Kelsey, and Harriet was the subject of our previous podcast. And we had talked about her early life in England based on the histories that her granddaughter had written. And we also had a letter that Harriet had written at the end of her life. But as I was looking at the FamilySearch family tree, I saw some conflicts and I was really curious to see if I could resolve those by doing some research and looking for some more sources.

Nicole (10m 30s):
Well, the first conflict that you noticed was Harriet’s birth year. So her profile gave her birth as before three August, 1823 in Char Wood, Surrey England, United Kingdom. Viewing the sources on her profile in FamilySearch, it shows that this was likely based on an indexed record of her christening. On that day, unfortunately no image was available to double check the date. Also, Harriet wrote a letter in her own hand to her grandchildren and stated that she was born at Level Heath Char Parish England on the 6th of June, 1826.

Nicole (11m 11s):
June 6th makes sense for a baptism on August 3rd, but the date is off by three years, so the years are definitely different. Finally, Harriet’s Headstone gives her birth as June 6th, 1825 with the June 6th correlating with Harriett’s letter, but the 1825 giving us yet another year for her birth. So when was she born? Eighteen twenty three, eighteen twenty five or 1826. To resolve the conflict we needed to view the original baptism record, autism record to verify Harriett’s identity and her birth year.

Diana (11m 46s):
Isn’t that so funny to have three different birth years and this happens, this is not an unusual case, right?

Nicole (11m 52s):
Right.

Diana (11m 55s):
We have this all the time in our historical research. Well, another problem we had was this idea of conflicting names and identities and Harriet was a triplett. We know that one of the babies died at birth, but the other was named Hester. And the girls were known as London twins because of their identical licks. As I’ve mentioned before, researchers often change Hester’s name on her profile to Esther because many of the records do state it as Esther. But I had found a family group record filled out by my Aunt Effie, who was a granddaughter of Harriet, a different granddaughter. And that record had a note that reads due to the dropping of the H in Hester, she was known as Esta after coming to Utah.

Diana (12m 42s):
I love that family group sheet, and that is one that I actually saved. You know when I am going through papers, sometimes I’ll get rid of old family group sheets if they don’t have anything unique in them, but I think that’s such a good example of finding something with somebody that had some family knowledge and had written it in on that little sheet. So comparing the spelling for Hester sources on FamilySearch, I found that the English records that name her Hester include her marriage record and the 1851 and 1861 England and Wells Census. So we’ve got those three records naming her Hester, and then the US records that name her Esther without the H include a ship manifest, the Pioneer Overland Records and the US Census.

Diana (13m 28s):
She’s in 18 70, 18 80 and 1900, and her headstone does have her name engraved as Hester with the H, as does a temple record for her. But a history written by granddaughter names her as Esther. So it would seem that both names are appropriate. But with the information from the family group record, I decided to change her name back to Esther or to Esther with the H and added this note to her record on FamilySearch so other researchers would know why I was making this change. Because sometimes we have little battles over how people’s names or information should be on FamilySearch. Since it’s collaborative and anyone can go change, we need to put some good notes out there so people understand,

Nicole (14m 13s):
Right? That can be so confusing when they’re called both names all throughout their life interchangeably. And there doesn’t seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to why sometimes it’s written as zester, sometimes Hester, but I think Aunt Effie’s description makes a lot of sense with the dropping of the H and Hester and thinking about her accent. So I’m glad that you were able to put that information in the reason statement so that people can see that.

Diana (14m 40s):
Yeah, absolutely.

Nicole (14m 42s):
Another challenge is that there was an indexed record for the baptism and that lists her name as Esther Harriet Huggett Hugget on three August, 1823 in Charles Wood, Surrey England, causing confusion about who this record refers to. Is there one person named Esther Harriet? Huggett Hugget, or as we know twins, one named Esther, one named Harriet. So again, the index did not have an image attached to it, so that was really confusing. And if somebody didn’t know anything about this family and they just saw that indexed entry, they would think that it was a person named Esther Harriet Huggett Hugget. Well, when the newly indexed record appeared on FamilySearch Ester’s name was changed yet again to Esther Harriet Huggett Hugget combining the two sisters names.

Nicole (15m 30s):
While it was time to search for the original record and see what the actual baptism record says. So it was available on the website, find My Past, which specializes in English records. So on the original record it says Baptisms Solemnized in the parish of Charles Wood, Sury County, August 3rd, 1823, Esther and Harriet Daughters of Thomas Jane Hugget Abode Charles Wood, profession of Father Wheelwright Ceremony by S Porter. So the record settled the question of whether this was one female or two because it says Esther and then it has an ampersand symbol for and and then it says Harriet, and then it uses daughters plural.

Nicole (16m 16s):
So for sure we know this is two children, two female daughters, and that they each have their own names, Esther or Hugget and Harriet Hugget. So it is interesting to see that the spelling is Esther, not Hester on the baptism. So this again, could have been because of the dropping of the H, and the clerk recorded it as Esther or it could just be that they were just interchangeable names. And Esther was the name she was baptized as, and Hester was just like a common way of pronouncing it or a nickname, whatever it is. She went back and forth between those two names her whole life. Well, to create a new source for this baptism record, it was important to add it on FamilySearch so that people couldn’t see that it is two different people.

Nicole (17m 1s):
So you can create a new source and you can add that image and linking to the image on Find My Past, you can add a source citation. And so putting all that along with a complete transcription in the notes and a reason statement stating why these two are separate daughters will help all the other researchers who keep getting confused.

Diana (17m 19s):
Well, it is so fun to revisit this and think about these records and how they were created. And I’m just so interested in maybe doing some more research on the name Esther and Hester and see if any other instances happen with this and other people You know, maybe in England it was interchangeable. I think about my own name, Diana, and I have people call me Diane all the time. I dunno if I have any records with it written as Diane, but You know down the road people could get that confused. I think that’s what my name was. So names are always fun to think about.

Nicole (17m 55s):
Wow, that’s such a good example with your own name. And there’s definitely gonna be some paper that has your name as Diana instead of Diana, whether it’s an official government record or just a letter someone kept You know, but Right, and those two names are very similar.

Diana (18m 9s):
Yeah.

Nicole (18m 9s):
All right, well our sponsor today is newspapers.com. It’s your ultimate resource for discovering your family’s history. Explore more than 800 million newspaper pages in their vast collections spanning three centuries. newspapers.com is your gateway to exploring the past with newspapers from the us, uk, Canada, Australia, and beyond. Trace your family’s journey and uncover the extraordinary tales of your Ancestors through newspaper stories, birth and marriage announcements, obituaries, photos, and much more. For listeners of today’s show, newspapers.com is extending a discount of 20% off on a Publisher extra subscription. Just use the code FamilyLocket at checkout and don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity.

Diana (18m 51s):
Well, what do we do when we have these conflicts come up? We try our best to resolve them and finding the original christening record did resolve the conflict with the birth year of Harriet and Hester. So although their records showed 1825 on both their headstones and Harriet gave 1826 as her birth year, clearly they were born in 1823 as shown by the original christening record, which was created soon after their birth. And we know that Harriet was a secondary informant of her birth. She was not cognizant of the date when she was born, but she was told her birthday by her mother and perhaps later in life she confused the year she had the June 6th, right.

Diana (19m 39s):
That was probably celebrated as her birth throughout her life and and later in life she confused the birth year and somehow it became 1826. But we do have one more record and that is the 1841 census. And that correlates with the birth year of 1823. So if listeners remember from the previous podcast, we had learned that Harriet had been sent to live with her older sister Eliza, when her father passed away. And she is in that census in 1841. It’s headed by Eliza’s husband named Major Agt, and it shows her as being age 18, which would give her the birth year of 1823.

Diana (20m 24s):
So that’s another little piece of evidence that goes along with it to give more weight to the 1823. So here’s my reasoning, and I added a reason statement for the birth date on FamilySearch, and I wrote Harriet and Hester were baptized on three August, 1823. So their birth would’ve occurred a few weeks prior. Harriet stated in letters to her grandchildren that she was born on six June, 1826, but her headstone gives her birth of six June, 1825. It’s probable that the date of June 6th is correct and she was mistaken about the year.

Diana (21m 3s):
Additionally, the 1841 census shows Harriet is age 18, which correlates with the birth year of 1823. So we all know conflicts will arise in our research and it really is good to try to resolve them. We can write something out and we use qualifiers such as likely or probably because maybe another record could appear, which changes our conclusion. And so we want to give ourselves an out, not say that we absolutely know because we weren’t present there either at the birth. And so we do our best to resolve those conflicts. But in this case, I do feel confident that there were You know there were triplets, one died at birth, and then the two sisters, one was named Harriet.

Diana (21m 49s):
One named was named Hester or Esther, whichever one you want to call her. And they were likely born on June 6th, 1823 in Charles Woods, Surrey England. So I’m really hoping that my reason statements and notes help other researchers to understand my reasoning and give a little bit more clarity to some of these conflicts.

Nicole (22m 11s):
Well, I wish that other researchers would use reason statements and notes more often because often I do have a question about why something has been changed or added, especially when I haven’t researched that person before. So I’m sure anyone reading your notes will be appreciative and they’ll learn a lot and hopefully won’t change things. And if you haven’t yet, maybe you could add an alert note, which is something we talked about in our podcast episode about separating men of the same name in FamilySearch and un merging them. But when you add that alert note, it shows when people are trying to do changes. I think

Diana (22m 45s):
I love that new feature. Yes. so that we know something’s been changed. So FamilySearch is trying hard to make it easier for us to have a really accurate record with the collaborative tree. There are a lot of issues. It can be really challenging, but I really appreciate the fact that this is a collaborative tree. It’s free for everyone to use, and when we work on it, we just make it better for the whole genealogy community as a whole. So it’s always fun for me to go in and do a little work here and there on ancestor profiles.

Nicole (23m 19s):
Right? And it’s such a benefit to be able to see the letter that Harriet Hugget wrote to her children that another descendant had uploaded that we hadn’t seen before, and all the histories that people have written about our Ancestors that we maybe haven’t seen. It’s just such a wonderful place to be able to put all of those items and share and collaborate. So even though people are changing things and we’re having to fix it, in my opinion, it’s definitely worth it.

Diana (23m 46s):
It is. And we can keep our own trees in our own genealogy software or our ancestry tree, and we can keep those with the information we feel is accurate. And then we have that as a backup in case something gets messed up on FamilySearch, which is very possible. It will. So we, we do our best to keep our own tree really accurate and then we have that for our backup to go in and fix things.

Nicole (24m 9s):
Absolutely. Alright, well that was fun talking about the conflict of the birth of Harriet Hugget and her sister Esther Hester, whichever one you want to go with. So Thank you guys for listening. We hope that you have a great week and we will talk to you again next week. Bye.

Diana (24m 27s):
Alright, bye-Bye everyone.

Nicole (24m 30s):
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 at DNA on amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket 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 in box each Monday. Subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket 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.