A return to the busy day at the office.

A return to the busy day at the office.

On my blog of April 15, I detailed the marriage of Salmon Gee to his mother in law. I e-mailed Support and today I received a reply;

Dear Ivin Laurence Gee,

RE: Solomon Gee PID # LZL9-B9S

Thank you for contacting FamilySearch Data Administration. Solomon Gee no longer shows with Deborah De WOLF as an incorrect spouse on new FamilySearch. Thank you for bringing this concern to our attention.

Sincerely,

FamilySearch Data Administration

----------------------
(CaseID:2562541)

An hour later I got another reply:

Dear Laurence Gee:

We looked at the record for Solomon Gee (MS5M-QHY) and we do not see Deborah De Wolf as a spouse to him. The record for Deborah DeWolf (KN65-2K4) does not list Solomon Gee as a spouse. It appears this issue has been resolved. If this is not the case, please let us know. Thank you.

Sincerely,

FamilySearch Data Administration

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(CaseID:2565570)

I still had an issue to resolve so I replied:

Now all we have to do is get the Deborah Huntley Gee marriage to two Ebenezer Macks Person identifier: LZDX-SX5 and Person identifier: LZZ1-HRM spouses cleared up, Ebenezer Mack was married to Hannah Huntley Person identifier: KN65-VT7. Actually on his record he is married to two Hannah Huntleys, but I am not going there, because I am working on the Gee line. When we get this taken care of, I will work on her non-marriage to Robert Huntley, but that is a matter for another session.

Thanks you for straightening this out. I am attaching the file, which explains the non-marriage of Deborah Huntley Gee to Ebenezer Mack.

The link to this file is:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3pRqBw_zruORVFJV1E2UkJBZ2s/edit?pli=1

I was going to make a separate blog entry for this, but it fits in nicely here.

The following day, April 16^th I posted about Mary Gee in the merry mix-up. We might quote Shakespeare here, “All’s well that ends well.”

2559793
4/13/12 7:15 AM
Closed

Wrong daughter
Mary Gee Person identifier: L7F3-MHL is erroneously listed as a daughter of Augustus Gee Person identifier: KWJP-416 who was married to his wife Annie (Johanna Wilhelmina) Dahlquist (1857-1933) Person identifier: KWJN-56C on 28 December 1877 Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah.
Their first child Ida Louise Gee Person identifier: KWZW-BT9 was born 10 Nov 1878 in Batesville, Tooele, Utah.
Someone has added a child Mary Gee to this family. Person identifier: L7F3-MHL. Date of birth 31 may 1857.
Obviously this is an error as her father was born in 1854. This Mary E. Gee born in 1857. She is Augustus Gee’s sister who married Rudolph Thorp Luker.
I have e-mailed the contributor LucardieCharlane1 who has reserved the endowment ordinance for Mary E. Gee. Mary Person identifier: KWJP-41Z has already had these ordinances performed.
I have had no response to this e-mail.

Could you please rectify this error.
Sincerely,
Laurence Gee

Dear Ivan Laurence Gee

RE: Mary Gee PID # L7F3-MHL

Thank you for contacting FamilySearch. We were able to unlink Mary Gee from Agustus Gee and Anne (Johanna Wilhelmina Dahlquist as her mother. She now shows in nFS as having no parents or family. We wish you success in this sacred work.

Sincerely,

FamilySearch Data Administration
----------------------
(CaseID:2559794)

Subject: Re: Wrong daughter

I combined the two records so that someone coming along would not try and
seal her to the wrong husband or duplicate any work. She now appears as record 25 in
the 27 combined records of Mary E. Gee Person identifier: KWJP-41Z.

Now a return to the Ruth Gee question. (See Friday the 13^th posting)

I received the following reply to my case:

Dear Laurence Gee,

RE: Ruth Gee PID # LZV8-PMF

Thank you for contacting FamilySearch.. Could you please spell out what it is that you would like to do with the record for Ruth Gee. It is difficult to discern exactly what it is that you would like for us to do.
We wish you success.

Sincerely,

FamilySearch Data Administration
----------------------
(CaseID:2559240)

Obviously I was not specific in my posting this case information.

I wrote the following response:

Subject: Re: Wrong Ruth

Ruth Gee is not the daughter of Zopher Gee and his wife Esther Beckwith.
Please see the attached documentation in PDF format. Please remove her
from this family and place her with the proper family, She is the daughter
of Andrew Gee.

Andrew Gee Person identifier: 9N62-FBN is listed in NFS with Abigail Lane
his wife. Contributors to the record are Family Search. There are no
children or parents listed, so I assume that these names were found through
extraction.
I hope that this is proof enough that Ruth Gee was not the daughter of
Zopher and Esther and that we can remove her from this NFS family and put
it in the right place (daughter of Andrew Gee.

Please look at the attachment for documentation. I also have a 129 page
document of the descendants of John Gee which further documents that Ruth
Gee is the daughter of Andrew Gee and the wife of Morgan Owen which I can
e-mail to you as well.

Thanks,

Please let me know if you need further help from me.

Sincerely,

Dear Ivin Laurence Gee,

RE: Ruth Gee PID # LZV8-PMF

Thank you for contacting FamilySearch. We were able to unlink Ruth Gee from Zopher Gee and Esther Beckwith as her parents. She now shows in nFS as having no parents and is alone. You may add the correct parents for her. We wish you success in this sacred work.

Sincerely,

FamilySearch Data Administration

----------------------
(CaseID:2559240)

I did not respond to this e-mail, but went straight to Ruth Gee’s record. I found her and put her in Andrew and Abigail Gee’s family (They are what I refer to as the New York Gees), as they had not a child listed. Then I connected her to her rightful husband Morgan Owen and found two of their children and attached them. I will leave this to someone else to finish unless I don’t find anything else challenging.

Now we await Support’s response to the non-marriage of Deborah Huntley and Ebenezer Mack. That may take a while for them to sort out.

A busy day at the office

There are many incorrect records in New Family Search. I noticed a new one today. They had Solomon Gee's mother-in-law as his spouse. This appeared just recently. I didn't know that they could get married that fast. I opened a case in Feedback to Support at Family Search and entered the following in my e-mail to them:

There are 170 contributors to Solomon Gee’s record. All records are correct except the following:

Record MS5M-QHY (Solomon Gee) has two spouses listed 1. Deborah Huntley and 2. Solomon’s mother in law Deborah DeWolf.

Today, 15 April 2012, I separated this record out and put the following notation in the Discussions.
“This record has no combined records. It lists the correct spouse Deborah Huntley and an incorrect record spouse, Solomon's mother in law Deborah Huntley. Please do not combine”
Contributor 1 Contact name:FamilySearch
Contributor 2 Contact name:unknown4470317

There were 120 Combined records before I started. In the Ordinances tab the sealing of Deborah DeWolf to Solomon was READY. He should not be sealed to his mother-in-law as they were never married.

Could you please remove the incorrect spouse in this record?

Laurence Gee

Something is happening to the data in New Family Search. It is like a moving target. New challenges appear almost daily.

An e-mail from my cousin Lamont

In trying to find out where the misinformation about Frances Gates as a spouse of Caroline Gee came from I wrote an e-mail to my cousin Lamont. His father, Lynn, was the premier genealogist of the siblings in his family.

Dear Lamont,

I suppose that you still have your father's genealogy records. Here is a problem that I came upon. Perhaps you could look at the family group sheet that he submitted and see if there is documentation as to where he got the information.

I then attached the e-mail that I sent to Family Search Support.

Here is his reply:

Laurence,

Dad was not very good at documenting his sources. Much of what he got was found at the family history library in Salt Lake and, I think, from various paper records collected from here and there and everywhere.
There isn't any way for me to backtrack to a source. So, if you are confident of your information then, by all means, make the corrections as you deem appropriate.

LaMont

Comment:
Historically there were two separate calls for members of the church to submit four generations of family group sheets to the church. This was called the four generation program. Thousands of sheets were submitted and collected and organized by surname in binders and were available to members of the church. When I saw the collection it was on the East wing of the second floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial building.

Volunteers took those records and entered each sheet into a computer database. This became known as the Ancestral File. It was not uncommon for people to copy the sheets and make that part of their personal database. There was little data quality control of the submitted sheets. Thus if the data was entered onto a sheet, it was considered correct. There was quality control of the data entered into the computer by the volunteers, but no checking of sources. Thus if someone submitted a sheet with erroneous information it would be perpetuated in private databases from the submitted sheets or from information from the Ancestral file.

A good example of this is the birth place of Lysander Gee. He was born in Austinburg, Ashtabula, Ohio but if you look in New Family Search and some of the records in Ancestral file you will find a birth place of Hanover, New York. Thus when these computer databases were combined to produce New Family Search all of these records were merged into one individual record perpetuating the misinformation.

Another case was that of Stephen Gee, the son of Solomon Gee, who was listed both as a male and a female. After submitting proof of his maleness, NFS wrote the following:
Dear Ivin Laurence Gee,
Re: Stephen Gee- PID (L7ZP-M7M)
Because the record with the incorrect gender was submitted by one individual, the record for Stephen Gee showing the wrong gender no longer appears in new Family Search. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Sincerely,
FamilySearch Data Administration

It takes a lot less time to submit the correct information than it does to change it once it is in the NFS database.

I believe it is our generation's responsibility to correct the records to reflect the true information. This will take patience, persistence and long-suffering on our part, but we now have many of the tools necessary to obtain the correct information.

Relationships to prophets

Some years ago my brother Glendon asked if Salmon Gee joined the church because of the common ancestry between the Gee and Mack families. I carefully researched this and as far as I know there was no knowledge of the relationship. I looked in the Church History Department which was at the time known as the Archives of the Church historians office. I read all the hand-written journal of Zebedee Coltrin, the man that baptized Salmon Gee, looking for clues. I found none.

Recently my brother Martell asked whether Joseph Smith ever knew that he had a common ancestor with Brigham Young or Salmon Gee. In order to get an answer to this question, I asked my neighbor Ron Barney about this. Ron has been retired form the Church History Department and worked on the Joseph Smith papers. He is probably as knowledgeable as any one about the Prophet Joseph Smith. He stated that as far as he knew, Joseph and Brigham were not aware of their relationship.

To illustrate our relationship to the Mack family I wrote a brief explanation some time ago. Here is the link.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxseXNhbmRlcmdlZXdlYnNpdGV8Z3g6MWZkNjA5OTZhNGQ3MTk3Yg&pli=1