I am pretty sure that there are genealogicalrats out there who use
Ancestry. I've just signed up and I am finding it quite useful. But I
have run into a minor problem that I hope somebody can help with.

For reasons that I don't quite understand, my maternal grandfather (and
his descendants) have become attached to my great grandfather by a
different (unnamed) spouse from all my great aunts. Is there an easy way
to "merge" this non-existent great grandmother into the real one, or to
transfer my grandfather to the correct spouse of his father? both my
grand father and my (real) great grandmother have quite a few relatives
attached, so I really don't want to re-enter details.

--
Stephen

You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick and still converse
With groaning wretches, and your task shall be
With all the fierce endeavour of thy wit
To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

Do you mean that the wrong information is on an online tree that
someone else has put there, or in an online tree that you have
put there, or in an offline genealogy program you obtained via
Ancestry?

Anne B

In message <7ll2cjF3eqt9...@mid.individual.net>, Stephen

There are (-:

Although I agree Ancestry's useful, I don't use their on-line
software/storage/whatever - I use Brother's Keeper, on my own machine.
(If prompted for a reason I'd say it's so I can carry it anywhere
without needing to be online to access it, plus slight concern about the
security of my data - I don't mean keeping it from others, I like most
genealogists want to share, I mean losing it; but to be honest it's
because I'd put so much into Brother's Keeper before online became
available that it'd be a mammoth task to move it. Though the loss danger
I do still wonder about.)

Having said that, a lot of these softwares work similarly - can you
_break_ a link? If so, try adding somebody as an extra spouse to
somebody else to get all the ties established, then break the link that
isn't valid. ("Delete spouse" or similar.)

As for online ones, I've just been introduced to one called MyHeritage.
I find it infuriating - it needs flash to see the eye-candy - but the
main thing is that it does quite intelligent matching between users, and
shows where it thinks you have ancestors in common, letting you view the
relevant bits of both trees side-by-side. I uploaded a GedCom file to it
(one from 2007 I'd had at rootsweb), and it found three or four matches:
the first one (about 7 common ancestors) twice, and one that wasn't a
match twice. The first one I'm pretty sure _are_ the same people, and it
let me send a message to the other compiler, and we're now in contact
outside of that site.

Incidentally, although it sounds like you're rather far down the road
already, I do hope what you're using has the opportunity to let you at
least extract a GedCom file: this is a sort of lowest common denominator
format that virtually all genealogical software accepts and can
generate, so at least the basic information - actually it's a fair bit
more than that, but there will be _some_ stuff any prog. has as special
- can be transferred easily. As I said I think virtually all the
PC-based softwares use it, and most of the online ones will at least let
you _up_load such a file; rootsweb will let you get it back (which was
handy here - I was playing after hours at work), and I _think_ will
actually generate a GedCom file for you from any part of your tree or
anyone else's if they've allowed it.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for ludicrously
outdated thoughts on PCs. **

"Bugger," said Pooh, feeling very annoyed.

It's my online tree - either my mother or I wasn't paying attention at
some point and associated my grandfather and great father but
(explicitly?) didn't associate my grandfather and great grand mother.
Can I just change my grandfather's mother on the tree and pull in my
great grandmother?

And while I am greatful for JPG's comments, I am currently building the
tree somewhere where other family members who have relevant information
can see it and add to it - and yes, I can export the tree as GEDCOM.

--
Stephen

You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick and still converse
With groaning wretches, and your task shall be
With all the fierce endeavour of thy wit
To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

Ancestry seems to do this sort of thing - I am currently married to my
great grandmother, or something.  Myself, I would try to rectify it in a
PC application and then upload the whole thing again.

--
David

If necessary you should be able to delete the surplus
great-grandma

I agree with JPG. I would never put my whole tree online.

(a) it makes it more difficult to correct errors
(b) it might get pirated - this has indeed already happened to
me, where one tree i put on has been hijacked four times by
people who are passing my work off as theirs
(c) it is much easier to share information directly by GEDCOM
than by making people extract it from online trees, most of
which are designed to make it difficult to extract information
as a GEDCOM
(d) a lot of the information on my tree has been given to me by
relatives also researching the family, and I don't have their
permission to publish what they have given me

I have restricted my online tree in GenesReunited, MyHeritage,
Ancestral File, GenCircles and various other to my direct
ancestors and their siblings and siblings' spouses. That is
quite enough for anyone who is related to contact me, and I
don't get swamped by droves of people who, for example, imagine
that because I have a John Smith in Lanarkshire in the mid-18th
century, it's worth e-mailing to ask me if I am related to their
James Smith in Aberdeenshire in the late19th century, birth date
and place and parents' names unknown, who fathered an
illegitimate child on a Jeannie Smith who might or might not be
related to him. .

Anne B

In message <7ll8vcF3e8qc...@mid.individual.net>, Stephen
[]
Ah yes, that's another advantage of online ones I hadn't thought of.
Glad you can retrieve your work (probably worth doing from time to
time).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for ludicrously
outdated thoughts on PCs. **

Archduke Ferdinand found alive - First World War a mistake!

 >> Anne Burgess wrote:
 >>>

My concern was that if I did that I might lose all the attached people -
I seem to have sorted the situation by editing my Grandfather's ntry to
change his mother (if only real life was like that...)

I had my laptop stolen a couple of months ago. I am beginning to see the
benefit of non-sensitive data being held in the cloud.

I'm not sure I follow - being on-line or not doesn't affect that, it's
the way that the data is handled wherever, surely?

Doesn't bother me - given that most of the trees that Ancestry suggests
might be connected are really shoddy pieces of work, I'd rather that
mine was out there (an inverse Gresham's Law); I'm in it for curiosity
not credit.

I can export as GEDCOM with two clicks.

Mine's almost all my own work, and I have permission for the rest.

I haven't been contacted by any strangers yet - and my response will
always be: what is in the Ancestry tree is what I know.

None of which is intended to suggest that my way is right and yours is
not.  Our circumstances may simply be quite different.

--
Stephen

You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick and still converse
With groaning wretches, and your task shall be
With all the fierce endeavour of thy wit
To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

In message <7lmah3F3e8oi...@mid.individual.net>, Stephen

Glad you got it sorted without losing anything. That's why I suggested
adding somebody as an additional spouse/partner/parent/whatever _before_
deleting a link. Being able to _change_ a link has apparently had the
same effect (of not losing data).

In my case, it was only "never _only_ online".

Ouch. Well, I have a mistrust of the cloud, but I see what you mean.
Sod's law would have it happen just after you've done a lot of work
since your last backup (or the backup be stolen/damaged too).

I'd agree with you there, it's the software involved - hang on, I see
what Anne may mean: you have to be online to do so. If just the software
usability, I suspect the online versions _are_ a _bit_ harder to use,
but I certainly haven't tried them all, and it may just be
unfamiliarity.

I'm with you there in wanting mine to be out there - partly because I
tend to agree that it's better quality data than average (this from
observation, not pride), and partly in the hope that I _do_ get
communication from others who overlap.

Hmm, not sure about that. Depends on how well your software handles
GeDCom files. I think this is a problem the genealogical software
industry (online and off) is backing away from addressing - that of
merging trees, ranging from ones that are very similar to ones that only
have a branch in common. (Very similar would allow members of the same
family to work independently on their whole tree and then combine their
results.)

That was my impression too, but we now know of at least two online
resources that do allow it - rootsweb, which I think will actually
generate a GeDCom file of the ancestors or descendants of any person,
provided the originator has given permission, or will let you get back
your own entire file, and Ancestry:

Mine's _mostly_ my (and my brother's) work, and I must admit I haven't
explicitly asked the few others whose data it includes - I will now
you've raised the point, but I suppose I was sort of working on the
basis that they gave it freely to me so would to anyone else that asked.

I got a few - less than five, I think - of that sort of thing initially.
I think the MyHeritage matching system - which lets you view the
sections of your tree and the other persons that it thinks might match,
alongside each other - means that I only contacted the two people where
the match was pretty clearly the same, and I'd hope others similarly.
(Try uploading a - limited if you want - GeDCom to it and give it a day
or so to do its matching. It'll email you with details of the overlaps
it thinks it's found.)

I can't remember which of us initiated the contact, but I am most
grateful to the person with whom I am in contact who has researched the
branch of my ancestors with the name Griffiths and in Wales: she's done
it properly (including local research - she's sent me pictures of
gravestones), which would be very difficult for me to do. (I'm just
grateful it wasn't Jones; I recently did someone whose ancestors were
Joneses in Wales. You get Joneses marrying Joneses - _very_ difficult to
disentangle.)
Indeed. I think if I had started nowadays, I might well have used one of
the online resources, though I think I'd have wanted one where _all_
information I entered could be backed up by me, and one which has a
"notes" feature. Trouble is, which one? RootsWeb seems very thorough,
though the interface is now showing its age (text-based HTML - which of
course some might consider a good thing); Ancestry I haven't tried - I
feel it's too commercial, but then that's mean of me; familysearch (the
LDS) seems very patchy, but that's based on the quality of contributions
(as of course they all are), and some - though not I - might have
reservations about the organisation behind it; MyHeritage is very Flash
and eye-candy (but that might suit the Windows 7 generation), but has a
nice matching feature; and I'm sure there are others.

One aspect of Brother's Keeper I have found useful - though it's tedious
to maintain properly, as is any aspect of this hobby! - is that it has a
space to record the _source_ of every piece of data (and let you ascribe
a quality to it, from 0 unreliable to 3 very reliable/original source).
This is most useful when new data disagrees with something you entered
ten years ago - you can see where you got the old data from, and how
good you thought it was then. (Incidentally, I don't give a rating of 3
to anything I've had as a personal reminiscence, except sometimes for
own birth/wedding details; for information about other people, it gets a
2 or a 1 - the more certain a person is of a fact about someone else,
the more dubious it pays to be!)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for ludicrously
outdated thoughts on PCs. **

Archduke Ferdinand found alive - First World War a mistake!

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

Ancestry is quite expensive, but the way it associates family members
from Census records is pretty powerful. Navigating the tree could be
slicker - it's not aways possible to get to an individual's profile from
other pages that mention them.

I don't have any problem with that fact that Family Search is owned and
run by the LDS. They have a huge financial stake in proving that it is
totally available to non-members of LDS (tax breaks vs First Amendment).
The problem is that the LDS doctrines on ancestors encourage an "if in
doubt, include it" approach to genealogy, as opposed to "only include it
when you are certain". That means that most trees on the site are utter
crap. Using a local LDS Family History Center to obtain microfilms of
parish records has much to recommend it.

I'm looking at MyHeritage at the moment. I'm approaching 300 individuals
  spread over 14 Generations and what I really need is something that
will give me an overview. This will be particularly challenging once I
have increased the coverage from the current 4 of my son's
Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandparents to
all 2048...

--
Stephen

You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick and still converse
With groaning wretches, and your task shall be
With all the fierce endeavour of thy wit
To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

In message <7loko6F3er3b...@mid.individual.net>, Stephen

Ah, I didn't realise it took (unfair?) advantage of public records.
Sounds most powerful.
[]

I had certainly noticed that effect; I hadn't realised the cause was due
to their principle.

Indeed. Ideally images, rather than transcripts (though indexing is
welcome).
Wow ... Following "only include when you are certain", I haven't got to
1000 people in the whole database yet (though close), and I think that's
in over 10 years ...
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for ludicrously
outdated thoughts on PCs. **

DOS means never having to live hand-to-mouse.