Is there interest for a category "Chance Findings"?

Question

We all have brick walls, and often the reason for them is that we cannot find documentation for a birth. There could be numerous reasons why somebody was born/baptized not in the usual locale for the family. Those events then show up totally unconnected in the church books of other parishes. Everybody doing a One-Place-Study will be familiar with these findings.

Should we emulate other genealogy sites and place those "chance findings" in a category so that they can be checked to provide perhaps the needed information for somebody to break down a brick wall?

I would think that people doing One-Place-Studies would be primarily in a position to contribute to such a category. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Have been accumulating information myself and have been wondering what to do with it.You can start a page on wiki tree.There is a format that has to be followed that is laid out.Name of tag, the goal etc. might take some time and effort but I'm willing to help.In the long run it could save people some time.

Answer 2

I've made a lot of profiles for what you describe as "Chance Findings." Often these are people who have the same name as a person I'm researching, and similar life details.

Create a profile using the "New Person" option under the "Add" tab.

Since these people are unconnected in WikiTree, I think it's important to create links that will increase their visibility within WikiTree by (1) adding Rejected Matches to profiles of people they resemble and (2) placing them in relevant categories such as the categories for the places where their life events were recorded and any relevant One-Name Study categories.

I don't see a particular value to a category like "Chance Findings," since the only commonality in that category would be a lack of family connections -- better to categorize people by their identifiable attributes, which are clues that might help people create connections for them.

Comments

This would not replace any other categorization people would like to do. It would just gather these "loners" together in one place where they potentially could provide a clue. In my main area of research it was customary to marry in the parish of the bride but in older records the LNAB and the birth place of the mother were not given, and often a (mostly) first child is missing in the birth records of the town the family lives in. There are no clues for the birth place of this child who suddenly pops up out of nowhere at his or her marriage.

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If I understand the definition of "Chance Findings' correctly, it seems to me that all of these people are currently grouped as Unconnected. At https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Unconnected we can find Unconnected profiles by surname. Maybe it would be helpful to add other sort keys for the Unconnected, such as location -- when it becomes possible to search WikiTree by the place names in location fields.

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I agree with Ellen--"Chance Findings" only tags something from the perspective of the person who finds evidence of a new person, and it does nothing to help someone who's looking for them. For example, a researcher finds my GGrandfather, who is a brick wall for me. That's awesome, and next time I look for merge candidates, I may well see him. But I'm never going to search in a category of what is essentially random unconnected people.

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Perhaps I'm working too much in Central Europe:
http://genwiki.genealogy.net/Zufallsfund
http://www.zufallsfunde.net/
https://www.familia-austria.at/index.php/datensammlungen/zufallsfunde
http://www.goldeneaue.net/index.php/2013-03-04-21-10-44/2013-03-05-22-39-17/db-zufallsfunde?start=180
http://www.goldeneaue.net/index.php/2013-03-04-21-10-44/2013-03-05-22-39-17/db-zufallsfunde?start=180
and on and on, you get the drift.

Answer 3

I found a domestic servant in a family census and I wondered what could I do for them now? It became a brick wall for me since the child was 7 and their mom could be from anywhere in South carolina.I think creating  new record gives them a home and a hope. Managing the profile keeps it from getting lost but it is available when searched for long lost family. Doesn't take a chunk of time, effort or love to help them exist again.

Comments

Great idea to make pages for servants and other strangers that wander into the lives of our ancestors. Dealing with these people who may have been important somehow to our ancestor families, may help tell our family's stories in a more complete way. What kind of servant were they? Why did they need a servant? How could they afford the servant?

There is a story in my grandfather's Irish family that his brother went to work for a man who owned horses and became some kind of stable boy or groom. When the man he worked for moved from Ireland to England, Uncle Michael went with him, and now his descendants, generations of my Irish cousins, live in England. Uncle Michael was absent from the Irish census as early as 1901 when he would have been only about 14 years old, but we find him in another local village as a servant.

This might also help us find our relatives who came over as indentured servants, or sponsored by relatives in chain migration. Many of my Irish ancestors came to America and became domestics for several years until they married.

So there are many reasons to connect these servants, because, after all, they are also part of our global family and should be connected to the family tree when possible :)