Early Gedcoms

Question

While working through a gedcom imported in 2011 I have come across a number of profiles where the info in the profile description (dates- parents) is different from that in the Bio section. Easy - incompetent editing! - BUT there are no changes recorded for these profiles. How does this happen? Were the profiles not generated from the gedcom, or were early changes not recorded?  Should I build on the Bio or the profile description, or just re-cycle and start again?

Greenhalch-1 is not an isolated occurence. [ I do know that Greenhalgh-581 fits the Bio description but has different parents.]

Answer 1

With James Greenhalch, it looks like the discrepancies were part of the original data in the gedcom. I’d try to find what sources there are to support either the information on the profile or in the bio and hopefully work out what is correct.

Comments

Thanks Gillian, but I am more interested in trying to find out how this happened so I will know how to deal with it in future, I think I may already have missed a couple.

Answer 2

The date in the bio must have been in a GEDCOM field for Christening, not for Birth. Since there is no field for Christening in WikiTree, it was placed in the biography, like all info from fields not used in WikiTree.

Looks like there is some untangling to do with the children of James'es parents - not all birth dates agree with the birth dates of parents.

Thanks for taking this on!

Comments

Thanks Eva - does that mean that the date for birth was entered in the gedcom as 1791 and that for christening as 1753?

There certainly is a lot of untangling to do - I might have bitten off more than I can chew!

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Yes, probably, since no changes show.

I guess that sort of thing can happen when people are a bit too trigger happy assembling their tree from indexed data.

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OK I'll go with that then, I think I can see how it would happen but it seems to have happened quite a lot with this import. It is pretty much what Gillian suggested but I guess I thought it so unlikely that I didn't believe her - sorry Gillian!

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I guess there is the possibility that the data imported incorrectly, maybe even combining two individuals into one, but it would need someone who has done more work with the early gedcoms than I have to confirm if that did happen sometimes. I have seen several profiles with parents with completely different names (even totally unrelated surnames) on the changes page and haven’t known whether those parents were actually connected after the import or not.

Anyway, great question you’ve asked.

From a practical point of view, I’ll take a closer look at the profile and the surrounding ones, and then maybe we can work together on how best to sort it out.

Answer 3

 Oh yeah Peter, you will see marked differences in how GEDCOM files data was imported way back when to just the last couple of years and especially now.

Take a look at this page for how to deal with GEDCOM created Profiles, especially the older ones.  And while I was not a member back then, it seems some of our present styles and standards were not enforced back than and were probably developed over time due to Profiles such as this.

GEDCOM Created Biographies

And remember that folks back then who might have been new to genealogy had just as many problems with what is and isn't good data as those do today.  What I find interesting about this Profile is it was created from a GEDCOM file from FamilySearch.  That site does not permit direct GEDCOM exports today.