trouble with doubles - siblings

Question

I have a family who have had young children who died and then had another child and gave them the same name. eg Sarah born in 1854 died in 1859, then another daughter was born in 1864 and was baptised Sarah.

I can not save the 2nd Sarah profile as a conflict message keeps coming up.

They also had 2 Johns.

Comments

Hi, Megan. If you would give me the name and wikitree ID (i.e., Smith-1234), I'll be happy to try to help you.

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Hi Jim

I have just opened a new page and started again and guess what - it worked this time. It must have been something else that I did.

thank you for your offer though...

Megan

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Perhaps you should add the information in the biography section "This is the second child in this family with this name see Smith-3000" on each profile referring to the other child.

This might save them being merged later.

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When the edit conflict message comes up the reason is usually that you have made an edit to the profile you started the new person's profile from, in another tab/window, while also working on the new profile on the create screen (before saving it for the first time).

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Megan, I also just found another duplicated childrens name w/ different dates (yet to be properly sourced). https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Smith-101648

Children #s 3 and 4., 

William Smith (1820-1822),

William Harris Smith (1823-1845), . This is not the first time I have found this with my ancestors. JPV IV :)

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It's not to do with having two Sarahs, it's either you edited the person you were adding her to or you had the window open too long and it timed out, causing a conflict error.
If you have infant deaths, you can tick the "no children" box in edit mode and you can go into "add spouse" and there is a "no spouse" button. These will help distinguish the two as well as a note in the bio and birth/death sources added.

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That is a really good idea - thank you. I have been making a comment on the 2nd child but have omitted any comment on the first.

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Thank you, that is exactly what happened.

Answer 1

I use the suffix field and put I for the first, II for the second, III for the third and so on... using Roman Numerals.

Comments

....not recommended.  

Personal coding systems

Sometimes genealogists have their own coding systems for identifying or distinguishing individuals. These may be beneficial in personal research but on a shared website where we collaborate on the same ancestor profiles we should only use fields for their intended purposes, as described in this style guide.