How did I create so many duplicate persons in my family tree? Why are there so many
people in my tree that I am not related to? More importantly, how do I prevent this from
happening in the future, so I do not have to spend time cleaning up my family tree later?
Howdy, my name is Devon Noel Lee with Family History Fanatics. I love helping people
enjoy the journey of discovering their heritage through building a family tree.
Today, let’s talk about the messes we make as we ADD people to our family tree.
First, we’ll discuss how we discover new people we could add
to our family tree and whether we should. Then, we’ll discuss how to avoid adding
duplicate persons to our family tree. It’s a tip few people are using, but you won’t want to miss.
So let's start with carefully adding new persons to your family tree. Here I have Austin Parker
Moss, the father of Charles Patrick Parker who appears in other videos on this channel. We have
a sister named Dilly and a mother named Catherine. The first thing we need to do is to find some
records to establish Austin Parker Moss and Mary Catherine and Charles together, and hopefully find
some new persons to add to the tree, particularly his siblings. Let's go ahead and use the 1900s
census. I like this one because we're going to be able to add additional people. So, let's go
ahead and click 'Review." And we're not going to use this one. I know Ancestry wants you to,
but I'm going to go ahead and go over here. Let's look at the details. Let's review this. Let's make
sure this is our relatives. We've got Austin and Mary and we have Charles. But there's Rose
and Jesse and Bertha Austin, Jane and then some roomers. So, be careful. Don't put those people
in your family tree until you find out if they actually are relatives. So, one way you can mess
up your tree is adding unrelated people to your family tree by not being careful. Thankfully for
the most part Ancestry will not say add roomers to the next page. So, we'll go ahead and click 'yes.'
So now, we're going to go through and we're going to slowly process the relatives. So, we already
had Austin in the database. Notice there are a couple of different variations for the name.
There's Austin C Moss and Austin C Mass. Now, we know that his name is Austin Parker, at least we
think we know. So, we're going to just ignore this for now. Notice this record provides a potential
marriage date. We definitely want to keep that information. Before we add those children to the
family tree, I have a warning. You may love adding siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, and in-laws
to your family tree. But before you add folks to your family tree, make sure you actually want
them you may want them in your family tree. If they are new relatives that you wanted to find,
particularly parents, siblings, children. and spouses. Or they may be persons that help you
resolve your difficult genealogy research questions, including but not limited to DNA
matches and their paths to your common ancestor. However, try to stay focused in your family tree.
Uou do not necessarily need to add the parents of your cousin's wife when adding a marriage
certificate to your cousin's profile. To keep your family tree like a well-kept garden, only
add people to your tree that you will be actively researching. Unless you really like going down
rabbit holes. You don't necessarily need to have 'one tree to rule them all.' That's FamilySearch.
Use Ancestry for your active research projects. If you disagree, let me know in the comments section.
So, I'm going to go ahead and make sure I have clicked all the siblings of Charles Moss which
are the children of Austin and Mary. And yes. some of these children may be from a previous wife or a
previous husband. But for now, we're just going to add people to the tree. We can edit relationships
later. So, we've got Rose. We have Jesse. We have Bertha. and we have Austin. So now,
it's time to go ahead and click the 'Save to your tree.' In this example, notice when I
added the people to the family tree I didn't create the duplicates that I have alluded to
earlier. I actually added new people and I made the conscious decision to only add the children
because they're part of my research project. But now, we need to tackle the problem that happens
when you're adding duplicate people. Let's go to Charles's father
and before we go to the hints. Let's look at the family tree that we already had. So,
we have a wife named Mary Catherine and then we have the children we just added from the previous
record- Rose, Jesse, Bertha, and Austin. And then there is a young lady named Dilly Moss.
I received this name from an interview. So, we're gonna go ahead and start looking for this family
in a census record where they're together. And we'll scroll down to the 1920 census
click on 'Review.' Review all the information. Get very familiar. There's also a Walter Lee and
Albert. We're going to be adding new individuals. And then we have this entry for Mildred. Wait!
Mildred? Uh, oh.
That might cause a problem. Let's go ahead and click 'yes.' And I'm going to skip ahead
to the part where we're going to talk about Dilly. Now, we here we have Mildred Moss and notice that
Ancestry is not pulling up a comparison person just like it did for Mary Moss or the Charles in
the previous record. So, many people when they're using this view or even the Quick View think, "Oh,
it's a new person." Check to move her over. And now, we will have Mildred and Dilly.
However, let's uncheck that. Click on 'not a new person.' And
I will actually recommend that you do this rather frequently when you're adding people
to your family tree click on 'not a new person.' And then scroll through the options that show up.
Notice there is a Dilly and there's not any information about Dilly. There's a Rose- 1883
but this child was born in 1900. It could be the same but chances are it's not it's not. Charles:
Because Charles is male, it's not. Jesse. Wait! I don't know if Jessie is male or female.
It would be awesome if Ancestry had told you the gender right here so
that can help you make a decision. There's Berthia and then there's Austin. Because I
researched that 1900 census and I'm now in the 1920s census, there wasn't anyone born
about 1900. The last child was born in 1894. So, this Mildred will be a new person.
And I do know that in this family Dilly was the nickname for Mildred. I don't know why,
but it was. So now, I can select Mildred. And now, I can bring over all this new information.
Clean up the location for Dilly and we're going to override Dilly with the Mildred. Now, I can go
back to the profile and add an alternative fact once I click 'Save.' So now, we have Mildred.
And I didn't add those two extra children. I'll go back and do that later. I'm going to go to
Mildred. And then I'm going to add her nickname as an 'Also known as.' And down at the bottom you're
going to see that 'also known as' fact. I have Mildred Moss and I don't create
a duplicate person by making the mistake of not checking to see if
there is someone already in the family tree. So that’s it. Now, you know where to find new
persons to add to your family tree. You’ll take time to consider whether you should add
them to your tree or not. And you know how to avoid adding duplicate persons
to your tree with a very simple trick. If you have other suggestions on carefully
managing the people in your family tree, let me know in the comments section. Or, if you have
questions about how to research and manage your family tree on Ancestry, let me know as well.
Your comments support the growth of our channel AND give me new ideas for future videos.
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And if you're ready for another video about how to use Ancestry, click on the video right there.