Help from the Watch feature

Adventures in Family Tree

Help from the Watch feature.

I received an e-mail from Family Search outlining the changes to the records in Family Tree that I had put a watch on. Someone by the name of mflood had made a change on the death information on:

Lenore Gee

KVPR-M4X

23 July 1891 – 5 September 1927

I looked at the record. And did not see anything amiss until I saw that she had two sets of parents.  Someone had listed her as a child of Erasmus Gee and Mary Jane Rogers.  This has cropped up a number of times.

I wrote to mflood and said:

“Dear Patron,

I saw that you had added some changes to the Lenore Gee KVPR-M4X record.  I also noted that she had two sets of parents.  Erastus Rowe and Geneva as one and Erasmus and Mary Jane Rogers as the other set.  As you probably know Erasmus Lysander was Erastus Rowe’s older brother. 

To day I am going to delete the relationship to Erasmus and Mary Jane  that is incorrect. If you have any questions, please let me know.  I do have some history on Erasmus.

Laurence Gee, M.D,

263 Edgemont Drive

North Salt Lake, Utah

84054

(801) 936-0803

Sent from Windows Mail”

Unfortunately I did not include a subject line, because I just got a new computer running Windows 8 and they have a mail program that I am not familiar with. I will try to figure that one out later,

I did go back to the record and deleted Lenore as a child of that marriage.  As a reason for the action, I put the following in the box that comes up.

There has been some confusion between the two brothers Erasmus and Erastus.  Their full names were Erastus Lysander and Erastus Rowe. Lenore was the daughter of Erastus.  Thus I am deleting this relationship

I made and error that I will correct.  I did what some people had already done, I unthinkingly typed Erastus Lysander instead of Erasmus Lysander.  I had already hit the delete button before I recognized my error.

This is a good exercise, because you can restore changes made, if you made a mistake.  I call this the repentance feature of Family Tree. ( You also have to confess and write a reason why you changed the record back to restore.)

Now if you look on Lenore’s record you will see in a box on the right of the screen the change that have been made to the record.  You will note the change made by mflood and directly above it three change made by me.  I corrected the reason for deleting the relationship to read as follows:

There has been some confusion between the two brothers Erasmus and Erastus.  Their full names were Erasmus Lysander and Erastus Rowe. Lenore was the daughter of Erastus.  Thus I am deleting this relationship.

The watch feature can help you in some unexpected ways.  I would not have looked at Lenore’s record and corrected the error without this being brought to my attention.  In reviewing the changes, I found why Erasmus was added as a father. Father, Erasmus Gee was added 26 June 2012 by FamilySearch.