I want to merge two profiles who are the same person with the same parents but who have different last names.

Question

I am trying to merge Solomon Lumbert Lumbert-38 with Solomon (Lombard) Lumbard Lombard-598.  Both names at birth (1706) were entered in Massachusetts Town & Vital Records written records as Lumbart.  The record is faint on the "a" for Solomon's father so it could be read on some copies as a "u", but all the other related families are clearly "a."  

Answer 1

You need tp propose the merge. Scroll to bottom of page of one profile, click propose merge and follow the prompts. Don’t forget to enter your reason and hit save.

Each profile manager has up to 30 days to accept/reject/defer the merge, if not it will go into default approval.

Comments

thank you, Marion.  I will do this.  it appears some sort of merge happened when I tried because the Lumbert-139 profile ID changed to Lumbert-38 when I changed the "name at birth."  I don't want to keep creating duplicate profiles so I'm wondering if I'll need to merge both Lumbert-139 and then Lumbert-38 the way you've described?

Answer 2

These records of family births were recorded after they already happened. Some births written earlier in the book than Solomon's show birthdates years later than his. So there is no guarantee this was the spelling the family might have used at birth -- we don't even know the informant for the record. A contemporaenous baptism would be a closer record to birth.

This is not the first time I have wondered what the WikiTree community does in cases where the "birth" record was clearly recorded years later by an unknown person. I wish the LNAB policy would spell out this issue.

Comments

Thank you Barry - I'll keep that in mind.  I don't intend to work in pre-1700s  but I did want to connect into the line without creating duplicates.  that's where the surname conflicts came in.  thanks for your reply.

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P.S. We are Lumbert cousins. Do you know any male Lumbert relatives who carry that Lumbert Y-chromosome? It is very interesting and potentially useful for research to test Y-chromosome when people can trace their paternal lines so far back.

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yes, Barry.  my half-brother Don Lumbert (Lumbert-140 living) and my son (living) who is not a Lumbert but has my DNA.  they were both tested at Ancestry.  since they are both living, I don't know if you can see them but I have put my DNA match to my brother Don on my father's profile (Lumbert-134, deceased).

I have no idea yet how to use this on any generation past my father and I'm not even sure I worded the source reference correctly.  I do see reference to my DNA match on successive generations, on the public profiles, so maybe my sourcing was sufficient.

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Hello Genny,

That is great! There are tons of people here you can help you learn how to use the DNA tests to confirm common ancestors. Ancestry DNA tests what is called autosomal DNA -- your 22 pairs of chromosomes other than the X/Y chromosomes that determine biological sex. Those tests can be good for confirming ancestors back to about 4th great-grandparents. Beyond that, they become much weaker at confirming ancestry.

But the Y-chromosome can be used to trace back much father -- for instance, back to the time of Thomas Lombard/Lumbert the immigrant. This is because while the autosomal DNA gets jumbled up with each new generation of descendants, and eventually gets to jumbled up that it is impossible to separate out the little pieces into useful information, the Y-chromosome is passed down almost unchanged from father to son.

Ancestry DNA does not test the Y-chromosome. Currently, the only company you can test at to get information useful for family research is Family Tree DNA:

https://www.familytreedna.com/products/y-dna

It's extra cost to start testing Y-chromosomes, but it opens a whole new door to using genetics to research genealogy -- sometimes into the really deep genealogy.

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thanks so much, Barry, for the information.  you wrote "The Ancestry DNA test is of what is called autosomal DNA -- your 22 pairs of chromosomes other than the X/Y chromosomes that determine biological sex. Those tests can be good for confirming ancestors back to about 4th great-grandparents. Beyond that, they become much weaker at confirming ancestry." - so does this mean I can safely click on the parent where it says "confirmed by DNA" back to the 4th great-grandparents?  they are marked DNA-matched at Ancestry.  

I'll look into seeing if my half-brother would agree to the Y-chromosome test.

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I am not sure what you mean by "marked DNA-matched at Ancestry." Do you mean that they show up in the Thrulines page? 

Generally, no, you cannot mark back to your 4th great grandparents as confirmed with DNA using an Ancestry DNA test. The only thing allowed under current Wikitree policy is that you mark back to around 2nd great-grandparents. The policy is written in terms of cousin relationships. If you have a DNA match to a cousin and you know your most recent common ancestors because you both have well-documented trees, then *as long as the cousin is genetically equivalent to third cousin or closer* and Ancestry DNA's predicted cousin-relationship range fits the relationship determined by your trees, you can mark DNA-confirmed on every Wikitree connection back from you to your most recent common ancestors. "Geneticially equivalent" because certain relationships are expected to share the same amount of DNA as third cousins, such as half-second cousin once removed, second cousin twice removed, etc.

But when you get back to fourth great-grandparents, you are talking about around your fifth cousins. Wikitree policy does allow for a more complicated process, triangulation, that lets you mark such ancestors as confirmed if you complete the process. But Ancestry DNA doesn't provide the tools needed to do this. You would have to download your DNA results from Ancestry and upload elsewhere or just take a second test at another company to even start the triangulation process.

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thank you for your patience and reply.  I'm getting the raw data DNA files from Ancestry and I'll see what I can do from there, if anything.

I was referring to the Thrulines being marked as DNA-matched.  I understand now that it's not the same at WikiTree.  at Ancestry, each ancestor who is DNA-matched with other people who have the same ancestor in their tree has a little dove-like blue symbol mark on that ancestor in the tree and on the profile as well.