Whitaker, many profiles of Mark

Question

The way I am adding profiles is first adding my direct line, 4 generations deep in the hope of finding matches with existing lines to collaborate with. This will keep me from adding from 250 to 500 individual profiles myself.

Soon I will be arriving at Mark Whitaker. His dob is around 1775 to 1790, depending on the source. I am looking at profiles and the information is mostly there in bits. Of the 17 profiles, some are father and sons, or nephews and uncles. Mark(e) is a family name going back to the late 1600's. I don't want to add yet another profile.

I don't mind doing the work, but some existing profiles are Gedcoms from years ago and never changed, or at least as far as I can tell. I would need someone to either teach me how to crack those open, or to extract them for comparison. 

I failed at finding the needed software so far. I know I'm dating myself, but after working with paper, there was software called Family Tree Maker that used floppy disks. It was notorious for failing and losing work so I haven't "invested" in software since.

Other profiles are completely  sourced with ancestry links. I don't maintain an ancestry subscription. From what I can see, my information indicates several partial profiles. This is a difficult part of the Whitaker tree because as Bill Whitaker stated in his book, there is little information on Samuel after he moved south.

That makes this effort more worthwhile in linking Whitakers' who have difficulty breaking through the information gaps. My motive is- time spent now, saves time later.

Comments

Also wanted to add that most of the Ancestry.com "sources" on these profiles are links to unsourced user submitted family trees.  Any source that says "Ancestry Family Trees" is probably not worth referring back to and in most cases the links are broken since Ancestry changed their address scheme awhile back.

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I have been digging in the Whitaker lines trying to proof out the father of [[Rice Whitaker|Whiitaker-1290]] In doing so I have found the wills or probates of at least 3 different Mark Whitakers in Tennessee. Take a look at those and see if you can figure anything out from there. I found the information by going to the G2G question and putting in Tennessee Wills. Also check the North Carolina Wills.

Answer 1

Well, Im not sure if this helps, but I think FamilyTreeMaker is  being phased out or replaced/integrated with ROOTSMAGIC. I  downloaded a copy of my Ancestry.com family tree, to a downloadable Rootsmagic "Free Edition" after letting my subscription to Ancestry lapse. I made sure that all the sources were also downloaded so at least now I have the citations available for reference research. For me ROOTSMAGIC is ok, Ill need something else soon,but at least Im not locked out of my source list. If I didnt download my gedcom, Id have lost it. So check out RootsMagic- its next gen from family tree maker. :) hope this was useful for you----

Tammy

Comments

There's an idea. It's not really expensive, if a program will allow me to open Gedcom profiles on Wiki to compare. But the information I had before (if I still have it) is bricked on floppy discs (lol). That means it is so old, much of it has been revised and added to, and it isn't worth trying to retrieve. I seem to remember having an ancestry account years ago but I don't have a Gedcom there to download.

Now, I have a combination of using Family Search and notes on my computer for things that can go wrong. Family Search profiles can be changed at any time, and in fact, I have been guilty of mistakenly doing just that, only to realize later I needed to fix a problem. So, I have more than one place to keep records. 

If I get Gedcom software, will I be able to view profiles from up to 13 years ago and compare?

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hey, great! if you had an acct  you probably had at least a small tree. now, if you digout your old ancestry.com username/password (you can tell them you forgot which email etc) you should be able to get that saved tree. get your familysearch tree uploaded.  ive needed to fix things too! lol here seems to be a great place. wikitree is time tested and growing fast. it was so easy to upload here today and start comparing already! as far as info being too old--sometime real good stuff has "disappeared" over time!

and i wouldnt give up on those floppys:)

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LOL I probably shouldn't have mentioned that. I hope their security wouldn't allow it, besides, I have found more in the last 8 to 9 years than years of searches before. When things were on paper, I could remember names and places. Now, I don't even know how many people I have, with in-laws, children, removed cousins, etc. Then I only had direct lines. 

I would not attempt a merge on Wiki, but suggest additional sources, missing people, or matches. I don't know the Wiki software well enough at this point. But I can't read Gedcom files that have been sitting for 8 to 13 years and compare. I know adding another profile would be duplication.

A couple of hours ago I found that someone went into an ancestor profile from the 1500's, (not here) thinking it didn't match their information, and overwrote with a Gedcom from 1996. I have contacted the person but they effectively wiped out 20 years of research without contacting anyone. Fortunately the damage can be repaired (I hope). It's not the first time though, I have to watch all profiles while trying to work on other things too. 

If Wiki allows Gedcom download, maybe I can get good software, figure out a way to download from the other site (which is looking bleak now or I would have already), back-up that software and use Wiki as sharing and a community sharing resource. That would keep my files protected.

I think I will post that as a question too.

Answer 2

There are at least two duplicate families there.  I went in and proposed some merges and did some GEDCOM cleanup, see if that helps.

There is also Marcus Whitaker-234 and Marcus Whitaker-1980 whose dates are close and both married a Tabitha but 20 years apart.  Did not set those as a match, but you may want to take a look and see what you think.

Comments

Thank you!

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I understand, but I don't want to alienate cousins by a perception that someone else has taken over and changed their entire history.

I know what that feels like. When they don't realize their links and monthly fees are for the most part meaningless, I can be patient. I had one person become irate when I pointed out a couple of valid sources. The response was to flood profiles with ancestry links "proving me wrong". *sigh*

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It can be frustrating to communicate with people who are convinced of the correctness of the information they found in other people's Ancestry trees, and who reject contradictory data. But I agree that its important to be respectful with them.

Forttunately, any changes you make to a wikitree profile should be preserved in the change history, although users might have difficulty finding it.

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are changes automatically preserved or is it the responsibility of the editor to record?

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Changes are recorded automatically. Click on the "Changes" tab on a profile to see the record of changes for that WikiTree ID.

After two profiles are merged (or after the LNAB is changed), finding the changes in the merged-away profiles gets a bit tricky. To see the change history for the merged-away profile, you need to find the entry for the merge. It will say something in the form User edited the data for Name. (Merged LNAB-2 into LNAB-1). Click on the "edited the data" link to see the content of the merged profile and click on the link for the merged profile (in this example it would be "LNAB-2") to see the fully history for the merged profile.

Users can make the Change History more informative by (1) writing a descriptive edit summary in the "Explain your changes" box on the edit screen and (2) making sure that all of the information in the profile data is also documented in the text section of the profile (because the the change history sometimes is inaccurate in recording changes made to spouses and other family connections).

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If this is one of those often repeated "errors" I would also document that in the profile along with the correct/documented information.  I typically put a note above the biography section along the lines of

"Many online family trees include Sara as a daughter of John & Martha, however documents suggest she was actually the daughter of Martha's first husband Sam as show by ...."

For some of the more deeply entrenched myths, I've created a free space page to document research and findings and then link that to the associated profiles as well.

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Hi Andrea, Sorry but which John, Martha and Sara(h)? We have a number of each, along with our Mark, William, Joshua and Mary's LOL. I even have first and second cousin rePete(r)'s and Marcus's etc.

There's nothing like tradition is there?

Yep, I missed that single little digit and suggested a match based on Tabitha. Without other info on (one of those profiles) it's difficult to tell. Darn digits, like leggos in the dark.

Thanks

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Andrea I removed my suggested match for Whitaker-1980 and Whitaker-234 because as you said the Tabitha dates are 20 years apart. However there are bigger problems that will need to be repaired and then the profiles will need to be compared again. I made the owner of Whitaker-234 aware of circular links and he will be making those changes.

Whitaker 1980 lists the same dob but is missing other vital information. It is a Gedcom stub with an ancestry tree link. Still, now is not the time.

Answer 3

you have to use an ancestry program to open and use a geo file, If you figure out how to exact the information another was let me know I still have every geo file I merged from starting in 2003. You can upload them to wiki the way they are now. Are they still numbered?

Comments

Thanks Cynthia,

Since this thread began, back in August, I've realized the problem was trying to open dead links to a gedcom that had been removed. This gedcom exists in other places online, parts of it are correct but, collaboration of information is required to correct the deficiencies and bring this information up to date.

Compounding this problem are circular links found in areas, possible missing generations, or extra generations in others, making it impossible to be sure which generation is which, and sort out these issues.

I have even adjusted my records to match some of what was shown here, and investigate if my family, had visited the wrong grave sites, of our own family members, obtained the wrong records from the wrong courthouses, had holidays with the wrong cousins and spoken of the wrong grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles.

I'm only being half sarcastic, it was the only way to make sense of the information. My family on the whole, and different individuals in the family, have been doing research on our line since at least the 1970's, mostly in person. It is upsetting for someone to inform any of us we don't know what is correct. When records obtained by a family member, available due to 45 years of combined verified effort, is rejected in favor of "sounds like", or "appears to be", we find that difficult. But I still looked into this gedcom to see what it contained.

There are many sources available for the information shown here, some matches the information I have, some doesn't. The online sources contradict the gedcom as it was downloaded. What we have here isn't exactly wrong, but it is jumbled and incomplete.

Other than adding recent profiles, I have not found a lot of missing profiles. There are many duplicates, disconnected profiles, and one downloaded line, full of issues, dominating the landscape. Nothing would make me happier than for someone to succeed in correcting these problems.

Possibly you will have better luck than I have, so I encourage you to attempt that if you are interested.

Thanks again.

Answer 4

I use Excel to analyze and sort genie data.

What I do is t create a spreadsheet with the following columns

Sortable surname (this is used if there are multiple versions of a surname.  I pick one and do a fill down so I can sort other columns.)

Surname (as shown in document)

First etc Name (so John or John George)  That way when I sort I can see if John and John George are really the same person with the same birthdate, parents, spouse)

Birth -Death years

Birth year

Birth date full

Birth city

Birth County or Region

Birth State or Province

Birth Country

Spouse sortable surname

Spouse surname

Spouse first + names

Marriage year

Marriage full date

Marriage city

Marriage County or Region

Marriage State or Province

Marriage Country

Death year

Death date full

Death city

Death County or Region

Death State or Province

Birth Country

Notes

Add each of your Mark Whittackers on a separate row.

Now you can see if any are dupicates

If any are father and son

I have a lot of French / German lines with names that go back to the 1500s and often have 5 or 6 people living in the same place at the same time with slightly different info that makes them different people  

It has helped me a lot to do this.