It’s time once again for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun and I’m late this weekend since I’m just writing this post on Sunday morning. It’s do-the-big-fall-housecleaning at the Stufflebeans this weekend, which is why I’m behind on the blog post.
Randy Seaver has given us a new challenge using our software program to determine problems in our trees:
1) Have you created a Problem report from your desktop genealogy software program? Tell us which software you’re using, how you found the “Problem Report,” and your results using it.
I have to admit two things – I’ve never created a Problem Report and I’ve still barely opened RootsMagic 9. However, I have imported a RM 7 tree into version 9 in order to complete a few other SNGF tasks.
I found the Problem Report by following Randy’s steps, since RM9 is nothing like RM7. The Problem Search tool is quite robust and it appears it is able to find almost any type of error.
Although I’ve just barely browsed its capabilities, I have noticed one thing that isn’t really an error and will be one of those “it’s not a problem” items to check off.
I looked at Rebecca (MNU), who was born c1934, married to Willard Cutts Greenlaw.
The Problem Search told me she married when she was just six years old, but that’s not true. I have found Willard in the 1940 census, but not in the 1950 census, so just put that he married AFT 1940.
The Problem Search only reads the year, not AFT, which is what other software programs do, too.
I’ll need to seriously sit down with a lot of time in order to go through all the “problems” found. Another item in the list that isn’t really a problem is a person’s sex is unknown. I enter children who died young and, unfortunately, nameless, into family groups. The mother perhaps reported giving birth to ten children, but only seven living in 1900. No death records are available and no gravestones or burial records have been located. Therefore, those children go into the family grouping with estimated birth years (based on gaps in births of the surviving children) and remained without an identified sex. Another item to just mark as not a problem.
Thank you, Randy, for this week’s challenge. When I finish the major house cleaning, I’ll have to spend some quality time checking out the problem list.
Yes, there are problems that are currently “not problems” because we don’t know some detail or like you did, using “aft” to reflect what you actually know.
I have a few of those unknown children also , which FTM flagged as problems. I also have a few people in my tree with sexually ambiguous names, and I don’t have enough information yet to know whether they are female or male, so they are marked as unknown sex. Apparently I just enjoy giving FTM fits.