G2G: Ask Your WikiTree Questions LIVE 16 Sep 11am ET

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ago in The Tree House by Golden Owl (1.2m points)

1 Answer

+2 votes

I have a question about how and when to use Uncertain Relationships 
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When I use the Relationship Finder, the shortest route from me to a distant ancestor often goes through an unproven ancestor (someone who's profile has few, if any, sources and the sources that are listed don't prove the relationship information in the Data Fields).
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This seems to happen most often when there is more than one potential parent or child to chose from and, for no apparent reason, one is chosen and put in the Data Field thus creating a link from the present to the past. 
Then that relationship is marked "Uncertain".
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From Help:Uncertain: "An Uncertain name or parent may be speculative but it should not be a guess. If you're only guessing at a name or parent you should not use the data fields. Instead, explain it in the narrative. You can link to highly speculative parents in the text."
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If knowing Sarah's father was Frank Smith but there are three Frank Smiths, two of which are known to have had a daughter Sarah and the third could have had a daughter Sarah but we don't know.
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Shouldn't none of the Sarah's be attached to any of the Frank Smiths but, instead, all three Sarahs and all three Frank Smiths have all three father-daughter possibilities listed in the narrative only; not have any guesses put in the Data Fields?
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[Edit: I did find one good example. (I'm not 'calling out' the profile mgr. I just couldn't quickly find an orphaned profile as an example.) My probable 8x GGF Richard Haughton-60 was attached to speculative Henry Houghton-5479 even though the Research Notes list three possible fathers: Henry, John, or Richard.]

ago by G2G-10 (13.4k points)
edited ago by James Olson

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