Do you have ancestors that are combined to the wrong family? Today we're going to show you how
to break the relationships of your ancestor to the wrong relatives. Now when I put out a call to ask
people do you have a poorly merged family tree, I was actually giving a situation that is a little
bit different. Which is why I'm making this video. Now, if you want to know how to break a
bad merge, two individuals merged together to generate one profile, be sure to check the link in
the description below or the video that will pop up at the end of this video so you can watch next.
But right now, we're going to talk about badly combined relatives. Now often, you have badly
combined relatives for the same reason you have poorly combined people in the FamilySearch family
tree- shallow research or same name confusion. So let's hop over to the FamilySearch family tree and
show you what the problem is and how I fixed it. Now thanks to our viewer June, she sent me in this
recommendation of Henry A. Hutchins. And she said Henry is connected to a Benjamin Franklin Hutchins
and Sarah Augusta Abbey. What we're going to do is. Then we're going to investigate this profile.
First of all, there are no sources for Henry A Hutchins. Well, there's 29 sources for Benjamin.
There's 22 for Sarah. There are six for Elderbert. And let's go actually look at Elderbert's sources.
So he's in the 1880 census. He's in the 1890s. In 97 getting married, 1900 census. All right, let's
go back to the family. Let's go back to Benjamin. And look at his sources. So I had these organized
by chronologically. 1845- these are main vital records. 1850- there's household. Henry was born
in 1867, I believe. So he should show up at 1870 cents. If Benjamin is still alive. 1860 census.
1880. So there's a big gap. You should still be in the home. So let's look at that real quick.
They have a Benjamin, Sarah, and Edelbert, Harry, a Valzera, Tina Francis, and Flora.
And if we go back to his children: Edelbert, Harry,
and then a number of those children that were listed on that chart. So this Henry
seems to have sprouted from nowhere. Is essentially what June is saying. So, in that case,
let's also see how was it ever created in the first place. So we're going to zoom
in on the changes from that are happening to the tree. And you're going to notice
that it's all in 2012. And the person doing the changing and creating is FamilySearch.
Now in another video, I already talked about why FamilySearch has been changing your family tree.
So this is from the initial porting creation of that database that started the FamilySearch
online family tree. And there is no way for a FamilySearch to tell you what this came from
unless it's attached to an IGI file. But we don't see any sources attached to this. If it came from
the IGI collection, then there would be a source. Before we continue, if you would like to support
the work that Andy and I do here on Family History Fanatics, there's many ways you can support us.
Like this video. Leave a comment. Share it with your community. Or become an FHFFamily
History Fanatics Channel Member. All of that information is in the description below. Now
back to the video. So I'm going to actually do these steps on the practice tree that's available
for educators on FamilySearch. So June, you're going to have to go do this live on FamilySearch
after this video. So what you do is you scroll down. you need to come into this view of Henry;
excuse me. And click on this little pencil in a box. When you click on that, what you're gonna
be able to do is you can remove or replace a father. you can remove or replace a mother.
Or you can remove or replace the child from this relationship. So I'm going to remove this
child from the relationship. And you see where the X is. It's going to take them away from
both parents. If I had clicked on one of the other links, like this one right here,
notice the X moves. So now he would stay with the father, but the mother would be taken off.
If you had a child with the wrong mother but the right father, you can do it that way. So
what we're gonna do is we're gonna come back down here- remove or replace. So we're going to delete
this parent relation. It's recommended that you delete the relationship only when you're confident
that the relationship never existed. So I have "reviewed the relationship sources and notes
of the individual." don't just check that box just because you want to. It's an honesty policy. did
you really check that? You're going to make a lot of people upset on the FamilySearch family tree
if you break relationships, and they really should have been connected. So make sure that when you
check that box, "I have reviewed relationship, sources, notes for this individual," you really
have. And then you can choose to either remove or replace the parents. Now June thinks this person
just was invented out of thin air. So we're just going to remove him from the parents. Now
the "Reason for My Change" box reason statement box. I have a lot of posts about writing reason
statements over on my blog. Make sure you check the link in the description so that you can access
reason statement guidelines and stuff. So I'm going to leave a reason statement and explain why
this relationship shouldn't be. "After reviewing the sources for Henry's potential parents,
a son born in Maine in 1867 does not appear in the census records, vital records, and more."
Now it's actually kind of weak. I should probably put in the parents and maybe put in the personal
identification number. So I'm actually going to do that right now. When another researcher comes
along later, they're gonna know. Okay, I looked at the records for these people with this code,
and this guy never showed up. And that's why I broke the relationship.
So I'm gonna go to remove parents. I'm gonna paste that in and click remove. So now you're
going to scroll down, and you're going to see that Henry has no parents. Now I'm going to
let you know a little secret. If you want to kind of prevent people from putting them in
again and put them in this family. A couple of things you're going to want to do. come here and
delete and say, "no evidence that Henry was born on that date and in that place."
now you have to at least put a date or a place. this hack used to work, or I could just take it
all out, and then it would be hidden forever and always. So just pick a place where this person
wasn't there and click save. And so the next thing you can do is, you could actually take off
the person's name. you got to put something there, so why don't you just put the letter "H."
and then I'm just going to say this person does not seem to have existed. you cannot delete
people from the FamilySearch family tree. you can only unlink them and hide them. Now what you're
going to find is that Benjamin no longer has that one son. He doesn't have that, Henry. And then,
if you try to search for Henry, you may find him a little bit of information about him with 1867
and with the Maine. If you come and try to add him back in June is going to have
hit this "Follow button," and she's going to be fully aware that you changed the tree. And she's
going to change it back. So, um, make sure that you're adding sources because if you do
actually find that Henry belongs in this family and June didn't know about it, then you need to be
attaching them back with documentation. And then that way, June and you can have a discussion
about the validity of that relationship. Because so far in her research, there is
this person didn't exist. Now I hope that helps you clean up your FamilySearch family tree.
Make sure you write those reason statements. Otherwise, people are going to get mad that
you're changing their tree. And if you need more tips and tricks on how to use FamilySearch,
check out this playlist right here. But as promised, here's a video on how to unmerge
poorly combined individuals. that one at all okay well, I can do it better