* Uncertainty re which are my ancestors

[Thisactuallyisme]

Hello.

This is my first post here, so please forgive me if I'm not using the correct terminology sometimes.

I've entered into Family Historian, quite a lot of data on my family tree, going back to 1610, using information provided by a cousin. He has now died, so I can't check with him regarding some conflicting details.

The problem is this: I have two sets of information on paper, both of which seem to have been sent to me separately by the same person. When I trace my ancestors back, I find they agree well until I find someone who is recorded as having married different people in each set of the data. That person also is shown as having a different father, depending on which data set I use. Tracing both of them back further I find that four generations earlier the two streams converge, leading me eventually to the same earliest ancestor of whom I have any information. One of the two streams is obviously wrong, but until I can resolve the conundrum I would like to show both streams in Family Historian, indicating that it is uncertain which is the correct one.

So my question is: is it actually possible to do this? If anyone has encountered a similar problem, please tell me how you handled it, and did you find it satisfactory or could there be a better way?

I would be very grateful for any guidance anyone can offer me.

Thanks,

Alan.

[tatewise]

Welcome to the FHUG Alan.

It is feasible to enter that person with two marriage partners (as if they had married twice) and two different 'fathers' (who may be married to the same 'mother'). Multiple parents like that often arise where fostering, adoption, etc, is involved.

There will need to be Notes to describe the conflicting uncertainties.

As a side effect of the common ancestors four generations earlier, you will get coloured ribbons in some Diagrams linking people who are 'duplicates' because they have a duality of ancestors.

An alternative approach is to keep one of the two streams separate but in the same Project.
e.g. Create a duplicate record for the person with a different spouse and father, and unrelated to their doppelganger.
You could use the Associated Person or Alias link to couple them together loosely. Those links are on the All tab via right-click Add Miscellaneous... but can be customised to appear on the Main tab if desired.

If any of those options are unclear then please ask again.

[AdrianBruce]

For what it's worth, my personal preference would be Mike's second suggestion of:

Create a duplicate record for the person with a different spouse and father, and unrelated to their doppelganger.

I feel that it's marginally clearer that way and might be easier to clear up once resolved. Suppose you have one individual record for an Arthur (say) married to Betsy, and another individual record for another Arthur married to Catherine. If your contact had checked the orginal parish records, there's a good chance that there really were couples Arthur and Betsy, and also Arthur and Catherine - just different Arthurs. Further, it might very well be that you are distantly related to both, so having them both in your files, as separate individuals, makes some degree of sense.

Of course, if the children of Arthur exist as (say) David and Edward, then both David and Edward should each be linked to both families, with notes explaining what's going on - hopefully one day one set of those double links can be removed for each child. In my mind, that's an easier task than the other option of eventually splitting one Arthur into two.

But it's very much dependent on how you work...

[tatewise]

However, if you do that, and link the children David and Edward to both copies of Arthur, you have established a relationship between the two streams. David and Edward now have two sets of parents, which is not much different to my first proposal where Arthur has two sets of parents.

It seems that which of various options is best depends on things such as:
Does Arthur have any children?
Do both Arthur's alternative fathers have the same wife?

These illustrations using Arthur may be misleading as Alan does not say whether the person is male or female.

[LornaCraig]

I think I would go with Adrian's suggestion, even though it involves linking the children to two sets of parents. Alan said that "Tracing both of them back further I find that four generations earlier the two streams converge, leading me eventually to the same earliest ancestor of whom I have any information. " Assuming that the research showing the two 'streams' converging is correct, then both streams are descended from the same distant ancestor. This means that both streams are definitely relatives, and it's worth recording them in the project (with explanatory notes, of course.) You may never be able to discover which is the direct line and which line are distant cousins but the two lines consist of different people and I would record them as such.

[Little.auk]

Personally I wouldn't put any conflicting information into a family tree until I had researched it further and identified which (if either) was correct.

If you are talking four generations there must be other sources like BMD, Parish and census records that could throw light on the problem.

If you do put this data into an FH tree, I suggest you create a separate project to work with it. I would also recommend that you use a scanned copy of the paper information as media with which to create source citations for the questionable Facts.

Do you not know which is the newer set of information? If it is more up to date it is likely that it is a corrected, and therefore more reliable, version of the original.

[LornaCraig]

If you are talking four generations there must be other sources like BMD, Parish and census records that could throw light on the problem.

The OP said their data goes back to 1610. Presumably this is a date which relates to "the earliest ancestor of whom I have any information". So there ceratinly won't be any BMD or census records! We are firmly in the realm of old parish records. It sounds as if th PRs may contain enough inormation to trace two lines which descend from that earliest ancestor, but not enough to know which is the direct ancestral line. This often arises when a baptism register names only the father of a child but there were two people of the same name and generation in the village and the father could have been either of them. It may never be possible to find any further evidence.

In this situation my personal approach would be to record the earliest ancestor and both lines descending from them. The 'child' can then either be linked to both possible sets of parents, with explanatory notes, or not linked to either branch. In the latter case a full note can be added to their baptism fact explaining that there are two couples who could be their parents, and referring to the record IDs of those couples. Then none of the information about the earliest generations will be lost.

[Thisactuallyisme]

Many thanks to everyone for your comments. I have now included in FH the descendants of two of the children of one of my ancestors. After I drew them out on paper I could see that one person is recorded as the son of two different men, one in each of the streams. This person is shown as having married two different women, both of whom evidently gave birth to the same set of children! Clearly, something is wrong there, so I need to investigate further. Meanwhile, I have added the extra stream, with the result that when I follow each stream's descendants I eventually reach the same person as a direct ancestor, but when I try to trace them back, only one stream works (the one I originally recorded in FH). The whole is complicated by the fact that my ancestors weren't very inventive with the names. There are many Johns, Williams and Charles-es, some of them even marrying women with the same first name. Sarah was pretty popular. Nice name though! Also lots of Ann(e)s and Marys.

Thanks again,

Alan.

[tatewise]

When tracing back, FH defaults to the first parents recorded when there is a choice.
But the other parents are also available as an option.