RESOLVED: "Mary (Buckingham) Fisher" didn't exist. Change her to Alice (Unknown) Fisher?

Question

Hello PGMers!

Anthony Fisher (Jr) is not fully profiled in ''Great Migration'', but is mentioned as "ANTHONY FISHER {1637, Dedham} [NEHGR 151:182-83]" under the profile of Samuel Morse (whose son married Anthony's daughter). Anthony's wife is not named by Anderson.

Here on WikiTree, we've picked up Anthony's first wife as she is often GEDCOMmed, Mary Buckingham (currently Buckingham-32). It's an error: she was neither a Buckingham nor named Mary. In NEHGR 151,  "The English Ancestry of Joshua and Anthony Fisher", April 1997 (the same article cited by Anderson), the first wife of Anthony Fisher is named as Alice __. (He had a second wife who is orthogonal to this conversation and was also not Mary Buckingham.)

I don't think "Mary Buckingham" existed at all. Her current profile is unsourced.

I propose:

• Change "Mary" to Alice and change LNAB "Buckingham" to LNAB Unknown.
• Detatch parents from "Mary"/Alice.
• Include "Mary Buckingham (disproved)" (or similar) in Alice's AKA.
• Update Alice's biography with known/sourced info including a Disputed Origins section.

I prefer this approach to simply detaching "Mary" and creating a new Alice, because it avoids leaving an orphaned probably-nonexistent "Mary" floating around. However, thoughts? Is there a reason, that I'm overlooking, to detach and retain the questionable "Mary"?

Always seeking to learn PGM best practices! :)

Answer 1

It's a question of where the redirections want to go, and who the PMs want to PM, and who the TL members want on their Watchlist.  All of that points to merging.  If there was a real Mary Buckingham, nobody's interested in her.

The snag is though, she'll only get recreated again.  There's an argument for leaving fictitious people in place with {{Questionable}} tags.

Comments

I was going to concur with you, Cheryl, until I read RJ's point: "The snag is though, she'll only get recreated again.  There's an argument for leaving fictitious people in place with {{Questionable}} tags."

RJ's right-- she's just going to get recreated when someone uploads another GEDCOM with this family in it. GEDMatches won't find her if we remove her, and there we go-- she's created again.

This implies creating a "Disputed Spouse" section in Anthony Fisher's profile that includes a link to Mary Buckingham-32 (but detaching her as his spouse), adding {{questionable}} to her profile (and perhaps to her parents as well?)

I've also posted to her profile a request that the two profile managers read this thread and respond.

In any case, Cheryl, thank you so much for working on this. I'm really appreciating the increased attention volunteers such as yourself are giving to cleaning up the PGM profiles. It's a huge project and all help is really really appreciated.

Thank you.

 

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This is extremely helpful! RJ, your insight seems spot-on to me, and thank you Jillaine for filling in more detail about how to accomplish it. Putting both of your replies together, I'm sold.

I'll wait to see if the profile managers respond, first, in case they have additional perspective to consider. :)

Answer 2

After some edits, we now find ourselves with this:

Alice [uncertain] "Mary Buckingham" Fisher formerly Buckingham

Who is still Buckingham-32, still unsourced, still attached as Anthony Fisher's spouse, attached to unsourced (possibly nonexistent, else likely unrelated) parents. On any page other than her bio (e.g., spouse's and children's profiles, etc.) it still appears the lineage is Buckingham.

Ugly.  I do not think we should leave her like this.

New proposal, in light of the previous discussion here and in her comments:

• Change Buckingham-32 back to vanilla Mary Buckingham.
  • Detach her from Anthony Fisher and the Fisher children.
  • Add {{questionable}} template to her.
  • Add {{questionable}} template to her parents. Leave them attached to her, though, might as well.
  • Add "disputed spouse" to Anthony's bio, wikilinking to her in the text, citing Anderson and NEHGR.
  • Add "disputed spouse" to Mary's bio, wikilinking to Anthony in the text, citing Anderson and NEHGR.
• Create a new profile for Alice Unknown.
  • Attach her as spouse of Anthony Fisher and mother of the Fisher children.
  • Add "disputed parentage" section to her bio, wikilinking to Buckingham-32 in the text, and citing Anderson and NEHGR.

This supports the suggestion by RJ and Jillaine that we permanently preserve a profile for Mary rather than merging her into Alice. I don't see any way to satisfactorily prove that Mary didn't exist (even if we find definitive records of Alice, someone's sure to argue that maybe they both existed), so keeping her around-but-detached gives us a place to address the issue without creating the appearance of support for an unsupported lineage.

Acceptable?  Objections?  Alternatives?

Comments

Sounds good, Cheryl. Thanks for your diligence on this. Be sure to project protect both women.

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This work is done. I'd be happy for anyone to quality-check it for me.

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Nicely done, Cheryl.