Need Help with Glascock Duplicates or Please stop me from crying!

Question

I have been spending a lot of time tracking down duplicates, setting ummatched merges, submitting merge requests and trying to clean up profiles and add sources where I can. I've adopted profiles that are very extended to try to get all the gedcom import duplicates cleaned up. This is important to me because they are my family and because the DNA mappings will never be right with all the dupes. But I am feeling very overwhelmed and frustrated. It seems like there are only a couple of helpful profile managers (of which I am very thankful) in this family line and the others are non-responsive or down right remove the matches and reject the matches even when the match is clear, which causes me to have to go down the rabbit hole again. There is also so many duplicates that name searches (for some unknown reason) don't find them all and I'm always stumbling into another entire duplicated family. I could really use some help!

So I'm asking! If anyone has interest in sourcing, cleaning up profiles, merging duplicates or has a particular interest in the Glascock line (and their extended family) here: http://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/Glascock-Descendants-44, please, please lend me a hand, I would really appreciate it.

Tonight WikiTree called me a spammer for so many comments on profiles and I am nearly to the point of tears from the frustration of the situation.

Comments

Hi, Allison!

I think we have all gone through the same frustrations that you're feeling. I know I have. :-)

I just added the Arborists tag to your question so that a few more people will see this. You may want to look into that project if you're interested in working on cleaning up dups, etc.

Also, there are so many people out here on G2G that love to help with problems like this, so never be shy about asking for help before you get this frustrated again! :--)

Julie

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Thanks Julie! I've heard of the arborists, but didn't make the connection with needing help on this family line. Great idea! :)

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I hate to add to the confusion of Glasscock but Glasscock-70 is incorrect.  John Glasscock Jr., son of John and Margaret O'Rear, married Elizabeth Taylor.. this information was provided her great grandson S Fuller Glasscock an attorney in Morgantown, West Virginia and John A. Kern.  Also There is a recorded deed 8-28-1769 in Fauquier Co deed book 3 page 460-65 showing that George Washington made a lifetime lease to  John Glasscock, Jr. and wife Elizabeth and son Hezekiah.  There are also references about the family in Fauquier Co., Public Service Claims list, page 6 and on page 13 of Vol 2 of Callahan's History of West Virginia (1923) John and Elizabeth had ten children:  1 Hezekiah (1764) 2. Sarah (Barker) 3. Margaret (McGraw) 4. Judith (Mellett)  b. 1772  5. Charles b. 1775 6. Leanna (Mellett) b. 1779, 7. Thomas 8. daughter name unknown, 9. daughter name unknown, 10. John b 1787,,,  How can I help?  It seems like the families and members are being mixed up

Can I use the information that I have to straighten any of this out??

Answer 1

Hi Allison,

I'm sorry to hear you are having a frustrating time of it.

In regards to WikiTree, I'm guessing you hit the 20-message limit. See here for more details on that: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Private_Messages#20-Message_Limit

If you are having difficulties with profile managers I'd really encourage you to make use of http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Unresponsive_Profile_Managers and http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Problems_with_Members.

Both this procedures are in place to help lessen the frustration.

Thanks!

Comments

Thanks Eowyn! I am aware of the unresponsive profile manager rules and am working through them with a number of profile managers. Unfortunately that doesn't stop folks from undoing the matches in the meantime. Maybe I just need to start a spreadsheet of all the dups so that even if someone removes the match I don't lose track of it.

Answer 2

Alison, I merged a few of them for the Glascocks profile managers who are waiting.

One thing that may help you dry your tears (-:

This DOES WORK like MAGIC here at WikiTree. We have a WikTree Magician called Paul. Paul's job is to work with unresponsive managers and also open up profile like this one >> http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Glasscock-95

Please look and see what I did. When you find profiles that should be open because they are over 200 years old. This is what you have to do to let Paul know what's going on:

1) POST A PUBLIC MESSAGE on that profile like I did  > "Please OPEN this profile as this person was born June 6, 1613"

2) THEN SEND THE PROFILE MANAGER A NICE PRIVATE MESSAGE FROM THAT PROFILE > "

Please OPEN this profile as this person was born June 6, 1613. Thanks (-:"

3) Then scroll down on that same profile from the "Family Tree & Genealogy Tools for Thomas Glasscock" down to

Open Profile Request Form
Use this form if Thomas is 200 years old and therefore Glasscock-95 should be Open but the profile manager won't change it. 

This lets PAUL know that it should be open.

AFTER SEVEN DAYS of your messages  >>

There is also on that same "Family Tree & Genealogy Tools for Thomas Glasscock" for Unresponsive Profile Manager Request Form
If you can't get ahold of the profile manager for an extended period of time and information on Thomas's profile needs to be updated, use this form.

Yes, we must be patient, I know but it does work like magic here.

Comments

Let me introduce you to Paul here, btw:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bech-2

He is the "profiles laison " man .

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Thanks Maggie. :)

Sometimes trying to be a good citizen is frustrating. I do follow the instructions on the page for unresponsive profile managers and that just takes time. I get it, and I don't expect people to respond right away or even in a week. We are all busy, I get it.

My frustration is more with the folks that are active on WikiTree (I check their contributions), but ignore my messages, ignore my requests to be added to trusted lists and ignore the merge requests. And then there are the far worse ones who actually remove the matches! I just have to assume it's because they think they "own" their profiles and don't want them merged with other profiles. It is very time consuming to locate all these matches and the search tool doesn't find them all, for example, searching on Thomas Glascock and Thomas Glasscock will not show you all the Thomas Glas[s]cocks in WikiTree, I think it only shows two or three around a given birth year range, the others I've found through siblings or spouses. So it's a lot of work and time to have someone else just throw away.

I really don't want to be constantly complaining about folks via the unresponsive profile request form. I just want folks to all pitch in and help with the process and I suppose that expectation makes me frustrated.

But even more than that is the shear number of duplicates, it is overwhelming to say the least and I could just use the help!

I wasn't aware of the open profile option, I guess I never noticed it. I will keep that in mind for profiles over 200 years old, although that still doesn't help with merging since only the profile managers can approve and perform the merges.

Thanks for the info!!

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I merged probably about 30  variations of those family members so now it's making sense now.

It would be great if someone could clean - up and source this biography more : http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Juet-1

 

 

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You are amazing! Thank you so, so much!! I will start work on the cleanup of the profiles tomorrow. I'm on call, so will be hanging out at home all day. You are a rock star!

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She is indeed

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It takes a village!!!

BTW, on Glasscock-95, there's a section about discrepancy on marriage dates.

If people don't know it already, "US and International Marriage Records" is so bad as to be avoided at all costs. If I was King of the World, I'd force Ancestry.com to get rid of it (along with their Family Data Collections.) People assume that these types of sources are valid; they're horrid.

They MIGHT be right, but if you've got -- as you do -- extracted church records instead, I'd go with those, and remove the reference to US & Intl Marriages. (Or retain it but with a warning...)

My $.02

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For others, it might take a village , but for us it only takes a single tree...one Wikitree.  ( With a lot of helpful people.)

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Just to throw a fly in the ointment here, the name is spelled "Glascock" in the earlier generations (some descendants changed it much later to Glasscock).   For instance, see the profile for Thomas Glascock (currently Glasscock-193 in WikiTree).  All the sources used (except for one blog, which spells it variously), use the spelling "Glascock."

I know that folks in the 17th C cared much less about spelling than we do, but they weren't dealing with data bases and search engines.  To avoid multiple redirects, it is important to decide on one "correct" spelling and stick with it.  Just something to keep in mind when merging.  Thanks!

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Thankfully WikiTree handles the multiple spellings of names by our ancestors using the Other Last Names field.

I've come across family documents where a father spelled the name one way and the two sons each spelled it differently and their spellings also changed document to document (version of wills for example).

Because there was no standard then, it's difficult to create a standard now, let alone try to enforce it. Others may disagree with me, but I don't think we should get hung up on name spellings in these cases. If a profile has a LNAB as "Glasscock," then it's appropriate to add "Glascock" to the Other Last Names field and vice versa. I don't think it would be worth creating those redirects you mentioned to edit them to change the spelling to be all the same way for LNAB in these cases.

Answer 3

If you still need help I am a descendant of J Carroll Glasscock to His daughter Nora . I've been cleaning some up as I come across them. I will help it might help with my Glasscock problem of figuring out the initials and seeing some sources.

Billy Davis