Thank you for this post. You have hit on many of my complaints. My favorite is the one where people are added who are parents of "discovered" people. I have multiple occurrences in my tree. Thanks again.
Why doesn’t FS require someone to explain why they are updating information or tying a source. Seems like lots of people ignore that information, even some UA-camrs don’t do that when they are giving examples of using FS, very frustrating. Also why doesn’t FS give the option to use the standardized information not the abbreviated information in the index, which it defaults to.
Oh they do. But somehow with the xth child in a clan this gets tedious, and I get snappy by the third child, and whenever that line 'why do you want to change the record' comes up, I can only enter the european Icarus&Matricula-link (that differently to the FS-file is correctly labelled and correctly placed as well as on the official regional map as well as on the emperial kataster-map) and add 'as plainly readable in the official source'. But they don't accept the european government-sources as valid links.
All of these points are part of my FamilySearch tree. Especial on my maternal Grandmother's side. It gets to the point, of why even try to support Family Tree. In the near future my death date will be recorded and my work will be replaced by fairy tales.
Some members of my family insist on a fictitious relation to peerage, Northern Ireland. Claiming ancestor Edward Rocks is Edward Agustus Duke of Kent. They have even created a parallel family tree. Some type of fictisous relationship to peerage has been added to every single family in the line.
Mr Tanner, can you tell us the time period (roughly) when Junior and Senior became a father-son designation? And in-law. I believe I heard that a son-in-law could mean something different in 1780 than how we use it today. So my question is - when did it change? Thanks.
Here is an accurate and interesting answer to the question as provided by Microsoft Copilot with source citations. The terms “Junior” and “Senior” have been used to distinguish two people with the same name, regardless of their familial relationship. This practice was common in the colonial period1. The terms simply indicated ‘the younger’ or ‘the elder’ if there were two men with the same name in the same town1. However, it’s important to note that these terms are not always indicative of a father-son relationship. They could also be used to distinguish between any two individuals of different ages with the same name in the same community2. As for when this practice began and when it was discontinued, it’s difficult to pinpoint exact dates as the usage of “Junior” and “Senior” has varied over time and across different cultures3. Today, in the United States, “Junior” and “Senior” are most commonly used to denote a father and son with the same name3. In England, the abbreviations are “Jnr” and “Snr”, respectively3. Please note that while these terms are most frequently used to denote a father and son with the same name, they can still be used in their original sense to distinguish between two unrelated individuals with the same name2. However, this usage is less common today2. Learn more 1 genealogy.stackexchange.com2 genealogy.stackexchange.com3 collectingancestors.com What I can add is that because these designations often refer to people with the same name rather than the same family relationship, they can lead to problems when either is assumed to be related.
Try to have Ancestors in Feldkirchen an der Donau. The parish-registers on Family- Search (asides being less reasonably sorted as the European registers on Matricula) are misslabelled as Feldkirchen bei Mattighofen. In Southern Germany and Austria Farmnames are often used interchangably as family-names. The Person-Cards are extremely unhelpful, not allowing the vulgo-name as part of the familyname. Because whenever a new or travelling monk during a vacancy baptizes children or does marriages and burials, and asks people for their name he would get told the farmname, not the family-name. The farmname being their vulgo-name, they are known by with the people in the region. Few replacement-priests check for elder entries by their predecessors to find out the 'real' family-name. And somebody who doesn't know the farmhouses in the village and the families living there will look up (and due to lack of naming-creativity also find) the wrong people.
As one genealogist told me, entries into your family tree that don't have sources are nothing more than mythology. It takes the sources to prove that these people are real and that the connections are real. One of my pet peeves Well maybe there's two, is one, people that just copy other people's tree without actually doing the research and two, people that see say they say share a surname with someone that is famous, they will purposely build their tree so that they can say that they are related to that person. They don't realize that when somebody goes to do DNA or whatnot That person has been copied so many times and what they've done has been taken for granted, that it throws off the algorithm and it can mess up DNA. I had that problem in my maternal family. My mother's maiden name biologically is Hight and there are at least seven different spellings for the last name that I'm aware of, and there is one very very well-known person with that last name. And that is Jost Hite he built Belle Grove Plantation in Virginia. You have no idea how many trees that I've seen from my DNA matches alone that try to say that we are descendant from him. But the family organization says we're not. So doing ones research and doing one still due diligence is important in a family tree. And you don't just take somebody's word for it or copy someone's tree because you may be copying the wrong information. And don't automatically think because you share a surname with someone that you're actually related because you may not be. And please don't force your tree to go that way because it may be wrong. On the standardizing of dates, that's a big one!
#11. The lady who created from her imagination, generations of people with no last name, no dates, no places, who, when asked for sources or references, replied they are "in a private notebook" that can't be divulged. She did it twice on my line, which suggests she is related. Horrible thought. One group was about 47 people, counting all of the sibs and cousins. She was thorough. FS had no solutions for it - either for cleaning up the mess, or counseling the offender. Ultimately I created a fictional male and a fictional female with obviously bogus names, merged in all of the fictitious characters, and left them floating as two small blobs in the FS universe. (The person changed their userid, attempting to hide...)
I have a situation similar to that only they think they have documentation but their documentation obviously shows their person is not the same as my person but they can not believe their documentation shows that.!!
I can understand James Tanner's comments and objections to historical records - or lack of records. But I find that his objections lack any remedies or solutions. His main point seems to be that Family Search (FS) wants and needs sources. The difficulty is that FS does not have any useful way to include historical sources into some profiles. To take an obvious example, records for royal families have all kinds of pseudo sources, but do they really qualify as true sources for genealogy? History tells us that William the Conqueror married Matilda of Flanders about 1051, but are there any records of this event? So far as I know, there is no such record from contemporaneous sources, that exists today. But, I think we are justified in claiming the date anyway, despite our genealogy proof standards that criticize this practice. I think this is justified for no other reason than that everyone alive in 1066 acted as though Matilda and William were married, because if they contradicted the assertion, William would kill them. Seems like proof to me. This problem also occurs in more modern situations, such as families in Eastern Europe circa 1930 to 1950. In that time period, every single family east of Berlin and west of Moscow was dislocated, and moved, sometimes to new continents, but always to some place else. Are there any source records in eastern Europe that can be connected to their descendants now? I think any such connection is tenuous at best, and they certainly do not adhere to any genealogy proof standard. I think Tanner's objection has to be tempered by some kind of acknowledgment that the scope of a source, has to be widened to include something else besides paper with some names and dates written on it.
Please understand that this is not the first and will probably not be the last of the times I have written about these issues. I have been suggesting solutions to FamilySearch since almost the day the Family Tree went online.
And the disadvantage is wrong information gets posted and reposted and changed back after it's been corrected. I don't use it and I wish people who think they know more about my family than I do will go away.
I “vented” right along side many of your comments as I find all the 10 things annoying… thank you for wonderful instruction.
Thank you for this post. You have hit on many of my complaints. My favorite is the one where people are added who are parents of "discovered" people. I have multiple occurrences in my tree. Thanks again.
Wonderful !
Why doesn’t FS require someone to explain why they are updating information or tying a source. Seems like lots of people ignore that information, even some UA-camrs don’t do that when they are giving examples of using FS, very frustrating. Also why doesn’t FS give the option to use the standardized information not the abbreviated information in the index, which it defaults to.
Oh they do. But somehow with the xth child in a clan this gets tedious, and I get snappy by the third child, and whenever that line 'why do you want to change the record' comes up, I can only enter the european Icarus&Matricula-link (that differently to the FS-file is correctly labelled and correctly placed as well as on the official regional map as well as on the emperial kataster-map) and add 'as plainly readable in the official source'. But they don't accept the european government-sources as valid links.
All of these points are part of my FamilySearch tree. Especial on my maternal Grandmother's side. It gets to the point, of why even try to support Family Tree. In the near future my death date will be recorded and my work will be replaced by fairy tales.
Some members of my family insist on a fictitious relation to peerage, Northern Ireland. Claiming ancestor Edward Rocks is Edward Agustus Duke of Kent. They have even created a parallel family tree. Some type of fictisous relationship to peerage has been added to every single family in the line.
Mr Tanner, can you tell us the time period (roughly) when Junior and Senior became a father-son designation? And in-law. I believe I heard that a son-in-law could mean something different in 1780 than how we use it today. So my question is - when did it change? Thanks.
Here is an accurate and interesting answer to the question as provided by Microsoft Copilot with source citations. The terms “Junior” and “Senior” have been used to distinguish two people with the same name, regardless of their familial relationship. This practice was common in the colonial period1. The terms simply indicated ‘the younger’ or ‘the elder’ if there were two men with the same name in the same town1.
However, it’s important to note that these terms are not always indicative of a father-son relationship. They could also be used to distinguish between any two individuals of different ages with the same name in the same community2.
As for when this practice began and when it was discontinued, it’s difficult to pinpoint exact dates as the usage of “Junior” and “Senior” has varied over time and across different cultures3. Today, in the United States, “Junior” and “Senior” are most commonly used to denote a father and son with the same name3. In England, the abbreviations are “Jnr” and “Snr”, respectively3.
Please note that while these terms are most frequently used to denote a father and son with the same name, they can still be used in their original sense to distinguish between two unrelated individuals with the same name2. However, this usage is less common today2.
Learn more
1 genealogy.stackexchange.com2 genealogy.stackexchange.com3 collectingancestors.com
What I can add is that because these designations often refer to people with the same name rather than the same family relationship, they can lead to problems when either is assumed to be related.
@@jamestanner45 Thanks! I may have to reassess some of my documents. I appreciate your taking time to respond.
Try to have Ancestors in Feldkirchen an der Donau. The parish-registers on Family- Search (asides being less reasonably sorted as the European registers on Matricula) are misslabelled as Feldkirchen bei Mattighofen.
In Southern Germany and Austria Farmnames are often used interchangably as family-names. The Person-Cards are extremely unhelpful, not allowing the vulgo-name as part of the familyname. Because whenever a new or travelling monk during a vacancy baptizes children or does marriages and burials, and asks people for their name he would get told the farmname, not the family-name. The farmname being their vulgo-name, they are known by with the people in the region. Few replacement-priests check for elder entries by their predecessors to find out the 'real' family-name. And somebody who doesn't know the farmhouses in the village and the families living there will look up (and due to lack of naming-creativity also find) the wrong people.
As one genealogist told me, entries into your family tree that don't have sources are nothing more than mythology. It takes the sources to prove that these people are real and that the connections are real.
One of my pet peeves Well maybe there's two, is one, people that just copy other people's tree without actually doing the research and two, people that see say they say share a surname with someone that is famous, they will purposely build their tree so that they can say that they are related to that person. They don't realize that when somebody goes to do DNA or whatnot That person has been copied so many times and what they've done has been taken for granted, that it throws off the algorithm and it can mess up DNA.
I had that problem in my maternal family. My mother's maiden name biologically is Hight and there are at least seven different spellings for the last name that I'm aware of, and there is one very very well-known person with that last name. And that is Jost Hite he built Belle Grove Plantation in Virginia. You have no idea how many trees that I've seen from my DNA matches alone that try to say that we are descendant from him. But the family organization says we're not. So doing ones research and doing one still due diligence is important in a family tree. And you don't just take somebody's word for it or copy someone's tree because you may be copying the wrong information. And don't automatically think because you share a surname with someone that you're actually related because you may not be. And please don't force your tree to go that way because it may be wrong.
On the standardizing of dates, that's a big one!
#11. The lady who created from her imagination, generations of people with no last name, no dates, no places, who, when asked for sources or references, replied they are "in a private notebook" that can't be divulged. She did it twice on my line, which suggests she is related. Horrible thought. One group was about 47 people, counting all of the sibs and cousins. She was thorough. FS had no solutions for it - either for cleaning up the mess, or counseling the offender. Ultimately I created a fictional male and a fictional female with obviously bogus names, merged in all of the fictitious characters, and left them floating as two small blobs in the FS universe. (The person changed their userid, attempting to hide...)
I have a situation similar to that only they think they have documentation but their documentation obviously shows their person is not the same as my person but they can not believe their documentation shows that.!!
I can understand James Tanner's comments and objections to historical records - or lack of records. But I find that his objections lack any remedies or solutions. His main point seems to be that Family Search (FS) wants and needs sources. The difficulty is that FS does not have any useful way to include historical sources into some profiles. To take an obvious example, records for royal families have all kinds of pseudo sources, but do they really qualify as true sources for genealogy? History tells us that William the Conqueror married Matilda of Flanders about 1051, but are there any records of this event? So far as I know, there is no such record from contemporaneous sources, that exists today. But, I think we are justified in claiming the date anyway, despite our genealogy proof standards that criticize this practice. I think this is justified for no other reason than that everyone alive in 1066 acted as though Matilda and William were married, because if they contradicted the assertion, William would kill them. Seems like proof to me. This problem also occurs in more modern situations, such as families in Eastern Europe circa 1930 to 1950. In that time period, every single family east of Berlin and west of Moscow was dislocated, and moved, sometimes to new continents, but always to some place else. Are there any source records in eastern Europe that can be connected to their descendants now? I think any such connection is tenuous at best, and they certainly do not adhere to any genealogy proof standard. I think Tanner's objection has to be tempered by some kind of acknowledgment that the scope of a source, has to be widened to include something else besides paper with some names and dates written on it.
Please understand that this is not the first and will probably not be the last of the times I have written about these issues. I have been suggesting solutions to FamilySearch since almost the day the Family Tree went online.
And the disadvantage is wrong information gets posted and reposted and changed back after it's been corrected. I don't use it and I wish people who think they know more about my family than I do will go away.
Sigh.