Too Busy To Post

I have neglected to post what I have been doing, so I will give a brief account.

Report on ordinances that our family has accomplished in 2016.

Initiatory and Endowment 32

Sealings to Parents 17

Couple Sealings 2

Baptism and Confirmation 163

Initiatory 35 (separate from above)

Endowment 9 (separate from above)

There are probably more, but I didn’t keep and accurate record.

Altgelt Stoltz file

See the May post for the Altgelt Family Tree

When I was in Germany 1997-2000, I put together a file in PAF, which I named Altgelt Frankfurt. I received some documents from Beverly Bennett, a descendant of Alexander Scoby Standley.  It was a mimeographed copy of a genealogy written by Axel Altgelt who lived in Buenos Aries.  His family emigrated to Argentina and then he came back and looked at the records.  The document was called Die Nachkommen des Johannes Altgelt Statschöffen zu Siegen.  A link to this document that I edited and placed on his record in Family Tree is provided here. The document contains photos that we took when we visited the area as well as the original document.  Axel went back to Germany in 1937-38 to collect this information. Appended to this document is a Descendancy chart that I prepared from the data entered into  PAF showing the connection to Alexander Scoby Standley  and Philinda Upson his wife who were the great grandparents of my grandmother Mary Ellen Kerr Gee.  Also in this PAF file are the Stoltz family from Germany who married into the Altgelt line in America.  The name Altgelt was changed to Outcalt, Outcault, Altcelt, Outcelt, Outgelt and variations of that spelling when they came to America. The Stoltz family name changed as well to Stults, Stolts, Schulz and variations as well.  With the help of Family Tree, I have been able to add names for ordinance work on both these lines.  

When working on adding sources to this line one day, I came across a name on Find A Grave.  The information was there, but no photo of the grave as is sometimes the case.  Being curious I look at the submitter and there was an e-mail address.  I sent an e-mail and it got me in touch with Andrew Outcalt.  He is also a descendant of the Altgelts of Siegen.  He and I have corresponded and he gave me access to his site on Ancestry.com of 24.000+ individuals.  In addition he sent me 196 pages of genealogy written in Spanish by Carlos Altgelt.  Carlos was born in Argentina and is now living in Michigan.  He wrote a book entitled “The Boy Who Never Grew Up”.  I saw a copy of the book when we visited Barbara Bennett in Preston, Idaho.  I have tried to get a copy, but it is out of print.  Andrew Outcalt sent me a file with some excerpts from the book and gave me Carlos’ e-mail address.  I have communicated with him.

I have been going through this information and comparing it with Family Tree and entering the data into my Ancestral Quest database. This database has 2,615 individuals and 857 marriages at the present time. My plan is to go through the data and add to my database and compare with Family Tree. This takes time.

There are Altgelt families that emigrated from Germany to Argentina, Uruguay, and the United States.  The earliest Altgelt is Henne Altgelt born in 1404.  There were bakers and priests (Lutheran) and even one Catholic bishop of Mainz, Germany as well a governor of the state of Illinois (John Peter Altgeld).

Butlers (the medieval kind)

I have been reviewing the Butlers of St. Brides (Sir John Butler 1285) and his posterity that lived in Dunraven Castle and updating the information in Family Tree and my database.

There are records on Family Tree that I have corrected on Thomas Lamrock Butler and his wife Dinah David.

Bailey

Because Penelope Bailey was not married in the church to Joseph Brown the pastor would not christen the children with the surname of Brown and they were christened with the name Bailey.  Thus, the children on my records have the middle name of Brown and the surname of Bailey.  They apparently kept that Brown Bailey even after they moved to Utah, but it did not go more than three generations.

John Smith and Phebe Gee

I have been working on the descendents of this couple. Phebe is a descendant of Solomon Gee and Deborah Huntley.  In recent investigation and comparing with Family Tree I have been able to add individuals to this database and straighten out the records on Family Tree. There was one child of this couple that I was missing in my data.  By corresponding with Jan Byg she gave me the name (Serena/Syrena Smith) and there are three records for her in Family Tree, but none list her parents, so now we can connect the daughter and have her sealed to her parents.

Descendants of Solomon Gee and his first wife Susannah Clark

I have been going down the descendancy tree along the Powers line.  Susannah only had one child Sarah and she married James Douglas.  They had a daughter Phebe who married Nicholas Powers.  One of their children was Reverend Aaron Powers who was a Methodist Episcopal minister. He later joined the Mormon Church but became dissatisfied and joined the Missionary Baptists where he remained until his death. In Politics, Aaron was a Democrat up to the time of the Abe Lincoln nomination for president. He then switched to being a Republican.

I added a number of individuals both to Family Tree and to my database. There are 12,858 individuals in this file with 4,281 marriages. 

Descendants of Lysander Gee

I keep finding new individuals who are related to Lysander.  This file is separate from Solomon’s although it contains some of the same individuals. There are 5,598 individuals and 2,361 marriages.  I did a study and found that 20% of his descendants were either not members of the church or had had their ordinances done posthumously. Who says that all the work is done for those of pioneer ancestry?

John Ulrich Stucki

Great grandfather Stucki hired Julius Billeter to research the Stucki family in Zürich and the neighboring cantons in Switzerland.  I put all these in my Stucki database.

In addition I have a Teilungsrechnung (a document detailing the distribution of the estate of a relative Frau Elise Götz - Brack, born in 1881).  She left quite an inheritance.  My mother got 38.80 Swiss Francs. I took all these names and put them in a spreadsheet with the ID from Family Tree.  I sent the results to a cousin Afton Bartlett who works in the Family History Library.  There were a few individuals that were not in Family Tree.  They will need to have their ordinance work done.

I have printed and bound the following documents.

Solomon Gee Descendants one Generation

Letters from Laurence to Alice 1958

Letters from Hawaii 1984-1985 from Pearl Gee

Surname Gee in my database

The Gee-Crouch families

The Ancestors and the Children of John Wright Clark and Myrtie Julia Cowen

John Wright Clark and Myrtie Julia Cowen and their Family

Descendants of John William Trussell

Journal of Marion Joseph Kerr 1892

Donated the missionary Journals on CD of William Erastus Gee and Robert H Skelton to the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU.

More correspondance with Family Search

Details: Laura Gee 1878-Deceased • 9NQL-T1X listed as Male Laura Gee 1878-Deceased • 9VY9-3B5 Female. She is listed as a female in this family in the 1880 and the 1900 census I am unable to merge these two because of the difference in sexes. Please refer to Data Administration

Details: Harry Lukin 23 April 1897 – Deceased • L76B-JLK Female the source lists this as questionable sex. Parents are John Lukin Deceased • L76B-JLL Ernnretta Ken Deceased • L76B-JLG Here is the real Harry Harry Lukin 1897-1967 • KZZ4-WZZ He is a male. Parents are John Luken 1858-Deceased • KHYT-3D2 Emeretta Kerr 1860-1880 • LCVD-3F Because the two Harrys are of different sex I cannot merge them. I have eliminated the duplication of parents and now both Harrys appear in the same family. One with a birth date 2 days after the other. I would appreciate it if you could send this to Data Administration for correction.

Working on Family Tree

I have been working in Family Tree adding sources, photos and otherwise doing what I can to improve the records.

This is a list of the changes

Ida Judd Source Added

Harry Thomas Cory Source Added

Doris Ellen Lincoln Source Added

Herald Eugene Smith Source Added Two photos Added

Eugene Loren Lincoln Source Added

John H. Cory Source Added

Walter Judd Source Added

Susan Eliza Gee Source Added

Edward Larkin Discussion Added

 

Frank Eugene Lincoln Source Added

 

Erika Holz Source Added

 Amos Botsford Fuller Sources and photo Added

William Erastus Gee Source Added

Mary Ellen Kerr Source Added

 

Marion Joseph Kerr Source Added

 

Stephen G. Rowe Source Added

 

Esther Beckwith Source Added

 

Abigail Mack Source Added

I also put together another Adventure in Family Tree.This is the case of the unexpected husband.  Click Here to read.  This involves Susan Eliza Gee my great great grand aunt.

More Additions to Stories on Family Tree

Here we go again with more stories from the archives.  Click on the name and it will link you to the posted stories.

Marriner W. Merrill

William Erastus Gee

W. E. Gee

W. E. Gee Editorial


Mary Ellen Kerr Gee

Life Sketch of Mary Ellen Kerr Gee given at her funeral.

This is probably enough to digest fro one sitting. Today is our fifty-fifth wedding anniversary.  So I will not be doing much digging in the records.

Adding histories from the archives

I snatch a few minutes here and a few there and am able to add a history or two when I can't go back to sleep.  Here are the additions.  Just click on the name for the link.

Vernon Ray Gee

Philinda Upson

Nancy Jane Rawlins

Marion Joseph Kerr

Ella Rebecca Merrill 

There are more.  It just take time to add them.
 
 
 

 

More Additions

This week I have been actively adding information to my Price, Butler, Bailey and More website. Click Here.
Particularly to the Reed Page. 

I also put some of these documents as Stories on Family Tree. Some of them are in PDF format with photos, so they do not go over to Family Tree unless they are put as a link in Sources, which I have not done.  Perhaps some day that will be accomplished.

I have also added a history of Nancy Jane Rawlins Kerr by her granddaughter Marie Danielson Benson to Family Tree, which you will find at this link.

I merged a duplicate of Nancy Jane Rawlins Kerr and noted that there is another duplicate, but when you click on the name, it comes up Julia Rawlins with some of Nancy Jane's information. I earlier put a discussion on this record as follows:

From the history of the mother Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins we read: Mary Ellen and Joseph Rawlins were the parents of three children; Their oldest daughter, Nancy Jane, was very helpful to her parents. She was married in 1859 to Robert Marion Kerr, and moved to Cache Valley where they became the parents of nine children. She died September 18, 1928, at the age of 83. Helen, who was a baby when her parents left to come west with the pioneers died at the age of thirteen, while her mother was visiting Nancy Jane at the birth of her first child. In the Mormon overland Trail record she is listed as Mary Ellen Rawlins. Further research will be done to document this record, but for the meantime we will stick with the name that is found in a contemporary record. There are probably other contemporary records which will document her name to be Mary Ellen rather than Helen. This history does not document this child [Julia] as a member of the family, The fact that the sealing to parents was done in 1993 further mitigates against the assumption that she was a child of these parents. 

My brother Martell is going to the Gee reunion in Conneaut, Ohio next Saturday.  I printed out a descendancy chart of Solomon Gee [9 generations] with notes for him to take to interested people ther as well as a photo of Zopher Gee junior. 

I have received some documents and photos from Thomas Cray and his cousin.  He is a descendant of Mary (Molly) Gee and her husband Webber Reed. Mary comes through Solomon, Solomon Jr., Leuman, and then Mary.  The family went up to Canada from Marlow, New Hampshire and then down to Iowa where Thomas Cray now lives.

Alice got an e-mail from one of the former members of our ward, who reported that her son-in-law had a Gee connection.  I have written to obtain further clarification. She comes from the Benson family, so I will send her the information about my connection to the Benson family. I wrote this up some time ago and give you a link to the Adventure.

Amber Thomas Galli, Glendon's granddaughter has contacted me and I have given her some information and links to the websites and this blog.

Matthew Marshall, my grandson, has gotten a job in Connecticut and wrote wondering where the Gees lived in Connecticut, I sent him a history of Solomon Gee.

My neighbor is an avid genealogist and wrote me with the following concern.  He has a number of type script histories and wondered how he could put them into Family Tree.  I suggested that he scan them in and then us an Optical Character Recognition software to convert the typescript to text, then edit it in a word processing program.  I use Abby Fine Reader which I got free with my scanner.  I found it on special on the Abby site for $29.99 (about half price).  The professional version is $200+.  I then transfer the blocked transcribed version to Microsoft Word and then look for mistranslations and errors.  I can then use the Word document or print it as a PDF file.  I usually send PDF files to people, because that is the best way to transport across multiple computer platforms.

I have had requests for the Power Point presentation that I did at the Gee family reunion in Heber.  Since I knew all the stories, I did not include them in the slides.  I am in the process of adding those stories, at least a shortened version to the Power Point and then include a link to the document posted in Family Tree Stories.   

And so it goes.
 
 

Another Kerr Post

I have been adding Stories and here is another on Arvilla Johnson Heyer 1^st Cousin 2 times removed.  She may not be familiar, but she is the daughter of Ella Annette Kerr and granddaughter of Robert Marion Kerr. This history comes from the Kerr family Newsletter.

 I also did some work in correcting the records in Family Tree.  I wrote it up as another Adventure In family Tree  Click Here . 

I will continue to work on Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins record.  It will take some time.  I hope you will be patient.

A Few Kerr Posts

Here are today's offerings for the Kerr line.

Marion Joseph Kerr

Story

Photo 

A clipping from the Deseret News

Alta Anette Kerr

Robert Marion Kerr

You would think I would run out of material, but there is more to come.

Adding More Stories

I was cleaning out some files and ran into some histories that I had previously entered into digital format from scanning in the original and doing optical character recognition, since I find this easier than typing them in.  Now that we have Family Tree stories, I put them into their records. The source for these stories was the Robert Marion Kerr Family Newsletter.  There were photos in the newsletter, but they were Xerox copies and not true gray scale, so I will wait for someone who has better photos to add them to the records.

Bertha Kerr Great Grand Aunt

Larae Kerr Skeen Fonnesbeck First Cousin Twice removed

Nancy Olive Kerr Harris great Grand Aunt

John Andrew Kerr great Grand Uncle

Robert Marion Kerr great great Grandfather 

William Jasper Kerr  great Grand Uncle

Stay tuned, there may be more to come.

Kerrs Again

Yesterday I posted the obituaries of John W. Clifford on his record in Family Tree and my wife Alice found an obituary for Robert Marion Kerr (Bob) so I posted that with a photo that I found on the Internet.  John (Jack) was the husband of Coral Kerr the daughter of Robert (grandmother Gee's brother) and Annie Spori Kerr and Bob was their son. I did not know that he had died.  Coral is still alive so I will have to get a photo for Jack's record from her.

If you can't do it, somone can

As you might remember, in my last post I ran across a duplicate record for my grandmother's sister Alta.  In trying to merge the two, I noted a warning that the records could not be merged at this time.  Today I received the following e-mail: 
"Dear Ivin Laurence Gee,
The duplicate membership record for Alta Anetta /Kerr/ will soon no longer appear in NewFamily Search.
Sincerely,
FamilySearch Data Administration"

If you have the correct information and documentation things can be changed in Family Tree. Unless we change it, it will not be changed.  

Further Adventures in the Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins saga

Adventures in Family Tree

Further Adventures in the Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins saga

Chapter 1

In our last episode we ended with the statement; We now await the response from the people at support. They usually are pretty quick about responding, but we have now corrected the records and have done everything that we can do with this case.

They responded with the following;

Note
3/7/13
3:28 PM:

Problem: Patron had merged three individuals. When all was said and done, the result showed his ancestor needed temple ordinances, which had been completed. The individuals he merged all had the same vital information and name. PID's of those merged are LZFB-8RG KVGX-VKQ L8SH-ZW5 He would like the completed ordinance dates and locations restore to his ancestor Mary Ellen Frost LZFB-8RG.

Email
3/7/13
3:22 PM:

Dear Brother Gee,

Thank you for contacting FamilySearch regarding your ancestor Mary Ellen Frost. We have forwarded your request to restore the temple ordinances to this person. You will receive an email with the disposition of this case. Your case number is 2992528.

Sincerely,

FamilySearch
Patron and Partner Services
support@familysearch.org

Email
3/8/13
1:10 PM:

Dear Laurence Gee:
RE Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins LZFB-8CX
Thank you for contacting FamilySearch Support. The ordinances for Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins now show on FamilySearch . Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Best wishes to you as you continue your quest for your ancestors.

Yours sincerely,
Family Search Data Administration

----------------------
(CaseID:2992528)
----------------------

They are really pretty good about responding quickly and resolving the issue so I looked at the record and found to my dismay that they had undone all the work and the record was back to Mary Evaline Frost with two husbands.  I wrote them the following response;

Email
3/8/13
2:31 PM:

Subject: Re: Missing ordinances

You just undid everything that it took me two hours to accomplish. Please
read the following document.

Click Here for the
Link. (They do not allow links to documents or attachments in e-mails as a security issue, but I sent it to them anyway.)

Read especially pages 8-20.

Mary Evaline Frost was not he wife of Joseph Sharp Rawlins. She is
listed as having the same ordinance dates as Mary Ellen Frost who was
married to Joseph Sharp Rawlins. I doubt that they are the same, but I will
not argue the fact because I am not familiar with Mary Evaline Frost and
her genealogy.

In the children of the marriage on Family Tree of Mary Evaline Frost and
Joseph Sharp Rawlins there are 8 children listed. These were not the
children of this marriage since it never occurred in the first place.
There were only three children of the marriage of Joseph Sharp Rawlins and
Mary Ellen Frost.

Perhaps it might be well for you to call me to go through this process.

My cell phone number is 801-631-9868. I am always available except on
Sunday from 10:30 to 2:30 and on Wednesday from 9:00 to 4:30 when I am in
the temple.

They responded;

Email
3/12/13
11:54 AM:

Dear Laurence Gee:

There are a number of ways we take care of records in order to accomplish what you desired in that you wanted the ordinances to show for Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins. We certainly did not mean to undo what you had accomplished in Family Tree. While both new FamilySearch and Family Tree are running, there will be issues such as this occurring.

The record for Joseph Sharp Rawlins no longer lists Mary Evaline Frost as a spouse. If there are children associated to Joseph Sharp Rawlins and Mary Ellen Frost, you may correct that issue in Family Tree.

Sincerely,

FamilySearch Data Administration
----------------------
(CaseID:2992528)

I did go to the record and found the record incorrect in that the name was Mary Evaline Frost, which I changed to Mary Ellen Frost.  The rest of the data was intact.  There were, however, children that did not belong.

For the child Orson Rawlins, I deleted the relationship.

For the child J.R. Rawlins, I wrote the following in the discussions on his record:

From the history of Mary Frost Rawlins: Description From the history of the mother Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins we read: Mary Ellen and Joseph Rawlins were the parents of three children; Their oldest daughter, Nancy Jane, was very helpful to her parents. She was married in 1859 to Robert Marion Kerr, and moved to Cache Valley where they became the parents of nine children. She died September 18, 1928, at the age of 83. Helen, who was a baby when her parents left to come west with the pioneers died at the age of thirteen, while her mother was visiting Nancy Jane at the birth of her first child. In the Mormon overland Trail record she is listed as Mary Ellen Rawlins. Further research will be done to document this child, but it is my contention that this child was never born to these parents. The inaccurate dates and places of birth would substantiate that assumption as well as the late sealing dates.

For the Child Julia Rawlins, I wrote:

Description From the history of the mother Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins we read: Mary Ellen and Joseph Rawlins were the parents of three children; Their oldest daughter, Nancy Jane, was very helpful to her parents. She was married in 1859 to Robert Marion Kerr, and moved to Cache Valley where they became the parents of nine children. She died September 18, 1928, at the age of 83. Helen, who was a baby when her parents left to come west with the pioneers died at the age of thirteen, while her mother was visiting Nancy Jane at the birth of her first child. In the Mormon overland Trail record she is listed as Mary Ellen Rawlins. Further research will be done to document this record, but for the meantime we will stick with the name that is found in a contemporary record. There are probably other contemporary records, which will document her name to be Mary Ellen rather than Helen. This history does not document this child as a member of the family, The fact that the sealing to parents was done in 1993 further mitigates against the assumption that she was a child of these parents.

Thus we find the record almost correct.  I think that I will leave this as such until I find out to whom Julia and J.R. belong.

Grandmother Mary Ellen Gee’s Scrapbook

Grandmother Mary Ellen Gee’s Scrapbook

A couple of years ago my cousin Loni Hackworth told me about a scrapbook that she had acquired and wanted to know how to scan it into digital format.  She took it to a local place, but the pages were too large for an ordinary flatbed scanner.  I persuaded her to send me the book and I would see what I could do with the digitalizing of the book.  The pages were 15’x12’ and the scrapbook paper was friable and disintegrating at the edges.  The paper was pulp paper and not acid free.  It was evident to me that this treasure of historical documents would soon be lost.  It would not be a good idea for this to be sent to every descendant to look at.  The solution was to digitize it.  Since I could not find a ready access to a large flat bed scanner, I opted to take my digital camera and photograph the pages.  I proceeded to do this and made a file on my computer with the results.

I was not particularly happy with the results, because there were some booklets that grandmother pasted into her scrapbook that I wanted the information from that I could not acquire easily with the digital camera.  I put the scrapbook in our records closet with all of the genealogy and photographs that we have accumulated and thought that I would wait until I had some time and see if I could resolve my problem.  From time to time I would see the scrapbook and say to myself that I needed to get back to it.  Well time has a way of flying by!

Last fall we took a cruise from Rotterdam to Scotland, Shetland Islands, Norway, and Denmark.  They had a computer class on the ship.  As you probably know I am interested in computers.  I thought that I might be able to learn something new, so I took a number of the classes.  I did learn some things that I found quite helpful.  One of the things that I found useful was stitching photos together.  This was usually used to make panorama shots from a series of individual photos.  I experimented and found that it worked quite nicely.  Wondered if I could use this technique to scan in documents that were too large for my scanner.  In particular, I wondered if I could scan grandmother Gee’s scrapbook, but you know how things go, we get so busy we don’t get things done that are not on our top priority list.

One morning last week, I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep.  I thought I needed to try and scan that scrapbook.  I had written a short piece for my “Letters from Grandpa” blog about my musical experiences and included some photos.  My wife Alice said she did not have something like that to write about.  One of our children commented that she did not know that her mother had taken piano lessons as a young girl.  Alice said she could write about that aspect of her life and proceeded to do just that.  We suddenly realized that our children knew only what they had experienced while living with us and little about what happened before they came into the family.  To illustrate the chapter in her life, she wanted a photo of the singing group that she was in when we lived in Lander.  We went to the records closet looking for photos of the singing group, which we found.  Alice noticed grandmother Gee’s scrapbook and mentioned that I ought to scan the book in.  The spirit’s promptings had fallen on deaf ears, but now I was moved to action.

I spent part of two days scanning in the pages of the scrapbook.  I have four scanners in my possession; a HP scanner copier printer, an Epson flatbed scanner, a Fujitsu Scan Snap and a Cannon portable flatbed scanner that my wife bought me for a present.  I wanted a portable scanner to take with us when we went to libraries, so I would not have to pay for copies of books and documents.  This was the best copier to use for this task and it allowed access from all sides.  I found that the pages of the scrapbook would fit nicely and cover the whole platen and extend about 5 inches on one side.  This allowed me to take just two scans for one page.  The next thing I needed to do was to stitch the two scans together.  My Cannon scanner came with some photo editing software by Arcsoft.  I used the help feature to find out if there was a stitching accessory.  It did have one and I stitched my first two scans together.  The result was passable, but as I went further into the scanning, I found that the results of the stitching were not acceptable.  There was overlap and shadowing.  I had to see if the program that I used on the cruise would produce better results.  The Arcsoft program required the left and the right side to be lined up in that order.  Windows Live Photo Gallery panorama option does not require the photos to be lined up right or left, it takes the two scans and merges them into one document correctly.  I was impressed.  I am now in the process of stitching the scanned pages together.   It may take a few more hours to complete the project, but it will look much better and be more readable than the digital photograph method.

Photos in Family Tree

A week ago last Sunday I presented a Power Point Presentation to our class in Sunday School on Family Tree.  One of the members of the class said that there was no way that you could attach a photo to a record in Family Tree, but that they were working on it.  I said, yes there was, but you had to know how to do it.  I should not have shot the balloon, but I had just done something in Family Tree and knew that photos could be attached, but in a round about way. 

Today I just loaded a photo of Nancy Jane Rawlins Kerr to Find a Grave.  You can find a link here:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=59515978

This adds a photo to the photo of the grave marker in Find A Grave and I added the link by creating a source in Family Tree.  There are more neat little tricks which I am looking forward to learning.

Stay Tuned.  I just experimented an  found out how to add her photo here.  You will never  know what you can do until you experiment.

Back again after a pause

Well I am back again meddling in the records, but this time on the Kerr line. As you may or may not know great-great grandfather Robert Marion Kerr had two wives who were cousins; Nancy Jane Rawlins and Margaret Elzirah Rawlins.  They were married three years apart.  In New Family Search and also in Family Search Family Tree there were two children listed in the families of both marriages.  In order to correct this in New Family search, I would have had to submit this to the Data Administrator for correction.  Now in Family Tree I was able to correct this by submitting just an explanation.  I brought up the family and clicked on edit relationships and deleted the relationship of the two boys that did not belong to Nancy Jane Rawlins.  Since both individuals had the same PIN number the relationship to the correct mother was not affected.  I should have taken screen shots to demonstrate how easy this was, but there are more errors to correct and I will remember to document my work.

 

In my database I only have George McCauslin Kerr and his brother James Harvey Kerr listed as children.  I will have to research the situation.  If this is correct, George and Joseph were twins and both were born and died on the same day.

Elzirah must have died in childbirth, because she died 9 days after the birth of her son James Harvey.

Another mystery to be solved.

How many times does it take?

My wife and I are going on a cruise at the end of next month.  One of the places that we are going to visit is Scotland.  I looked in my database to find those ancestors that came form Scotland.  The Kerr family came to America from Scotland.  My database was incomplete, so I went to New Family Search to see if there was any information.  I looked at Robert Marion Kerr and saw that someone had again combined the records so that there is now a loop and William Jasper Kerr the grandson of William Jasper Kerr is again married to his grandmother (shocking, who would want to be married to his grandmother?).

I had already tackled this problem twice before and thought I had it resolved.  I wrote this up as an Adventure in New Family Search over a year ago.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxlYWdsZXJpZGdlbmZzfGd4OjYxMWUyNGUyY2JlMWJkNTE&pli=1

I was disconcerted to say the least.  I again reopened the case in Family Search Support.  We will have to see what happens.  Stay tuned.

Family Search Watch

Each week I get an e-mail from Family Search on any activity on the records that I have put a watch on.  I have placed a watch on some of the records that I have been working on. In the past I have found that very helpful, because some patrons combine records that should not be combined or enter changes that may or may not be correct.  I do not know why I feel I need to be the guardian of the records, but I guess that I have a desire that everything should be correct even if I am wrong.

This week I got another e-mail.  Usually it is 4 or 5 changes, but this week there were 53 changes.  The majority were changes by Family Search with minor changes such as correcting names and spellings and places of birth or death.  It was somewhat time consuming to go through all 53 records, but it was worth it because I found the following records that need attention.  I even found two individuals who need ordinance work.  I made a list, so that if my computer crashes I will have the information on a website, or as the present terminology would have it, on the Cloud.( A fancy term for web based backup.)

NFS Cleanup needed.

Abigail Hill Person identifier: LHLM-PJB her many husbands

Sophia Mack Person identifier: LHZX-ZLY where does this information come from?

Ebenezar Mack Person identifier: LZV8-YBJ multiple spouses and duplicate parents.

John Dodds Telford Person identifier: KWJX-YCR two sets of parents.  The one set is incorrect.

Sarah Maria Sayles Person identifier: KWJP-HQJ 7 sets of parents 3 extra spouses.

Find Grave marker for Graham Coltrin Person identifier: KWJP-HCC supposedly buried in the Centerville Cemetery.  His name was on On Find a Grave, but no photo of the headstone. Needs research

William Jasper Kerr Person identifier: KWJP-CSM has three wives, one unknown with a child John Campbell Kerr.  Needs research.

Solomon Gee Jr. Person identifier: LZPP-GVP has two spouses.  Look and see if the spouses need to be combined.

August Bernard LCRZ-8TW and wife Gertrude LCRZ-DSD need temple ordinances done and daughter Alice LCRJ-THR needs to be sealed, but she only died recently.

Sara Gee (Sarah) Person identifier: 2736-R71 has two sets of parents.  Solomon Gee and both his wives.  This needs to be corrected.

Susannah Moody Person identifier: LHZ8-FJ5 has two sets of parents.  This needs research and correction.

Betty Catherine Bruce Person identifier: 2MGH-H5K needs a definite date of death and place of death. I will have to look in my database.

William Gee Person identifier: LZJG-NS1 has an extra spouse that doesn’t belong.  I have written the person that placed that record, but he has so far not taken action.

Elam Luddington Person identifier: K24C-FH6 has three sets of parents. This needs research.

Edward Gee Person identifier: LC1Y-J1N has two children that need ordinances.

Martha Bingham Person identifier: LZD7-W9P needs to be combined with Mrs Solomon Gee Jr. MQRC-26F Her birth date is listed as 1694.

Deborah Gee Person identifier: KNSS-KG3 has one record with gender unknown.

This will take some time to do.  As I complete each item on the list, it will appear in my next watch e-mail entitled “Weekly FamilySearch changes for things you are watching” with me as the contributor.