Help needed sorting out profiles [closed]

Question

I was approached the other day by another member, suggesting a merge between Grant-10233 (a profile I had written,) and Grant-11489. There were minor differences, birth date and place and death date and place did not coincide. Aside from the name, birth state (Maine) and the wife’s name there was no common ground. I spent what seemed like 4 hours chasing phantoms until I found his FindAGrave memorial {{FindAGrave| 73716479}}. I used the information there, and a couple of other comments, one about a child’s death, another about his marriage, and firmed up the profile.  Then I checked again against Grant-114889. No improvement, still almost nothing matched.

I went back to FamilySearch and found his birth notice, (didn’t coincide) Same name, how many George Washington Thompson Grants were born in Maine between 1810 and 1820? The I noticed on this (birth doc) attached to: K2N7-QR3.  It seems this is a FamilySearch reference. I went to it, (I’m a for-free member of FamilySearch) and found everything imaginable about GWT Grand-11489.  Some things jibed, a very strange sounding township in Wisconsin where both of them lived for a while, among other things.

Realizing that FamilySearch is an arm of Ancestry and we’ve come to distrust Ancestry’s facts, I’m about to merge the two and ignore data that isn’t on FindAGrave.

I’m hoping that someone can delve into this and end our suffering by resolving the disputes.

Thanks in advance.

Comments

Family Search has no connection to Ancestry.com. It is now and always has been maintained by the LDS church. I would certainly trust records there, not family trees, much more than I trust Find A Grave.

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I certainly would not use findagrave as a principal source but more as an extra reference that would lead up to a source. If there is any information that may be close but not a match I would suggest setting it as a unmerged match until there is more conclusive source information to verify they're indeed the same person.

Answer 1

Ancestry has good records, just stay away from the tree info, people sweep all sorts of stuff up into them. And I do see Family Search birth records now on Ancestry, so they have some kind of recent connection.

Comments

The only connection is an agreement to share images. However, FindAGrave is owned by Ancestry.com.