When should we leave duplicates in place?

Question

At this time Margaret Eleanor Cory-615 has two husbands named James Gibson (Gibson-5627 and Gibson-19906).  She married both of them on the same date.  Obviously they represent only one person, and ordinarily we would merge them.  A problem is that the two men have different parents.  Assuming that other profiles are correct, the two James Gibsons are first cousins.

If we leave both James Gibsons as they are now, then someone tracing his ancestry backward will come to a bifurcation.  He can go left or go right, but either way after one generation he will be back on the correct path.

Another option is to make your best guess as to which of the two first cousins is the real husband and then include a note in the profile saying that the husband may in fact be the other cousin.

Another option is leave Margaret Eleanor Cory without a husband in the tree structure and point out that her husband was one or the other of two first cousins.  Those first cousins will have their own profiles, and the explanation in the profile of Margaret can link to them.

What should we do?

Answer 1

If there is nothing strongly favoring one over the other thru primary source records and it is likely the two men are related as first cousins, an option I would consider is detaching both, explain the situation briefly in the narrative with links to both men, then refer the reader to Research Notes where you can give all of the details. The same entry should then appear in modified form on both potential husband profiles with a link to Margaret.

Edit: if they are later found the same man, the profiles can be merged leaving only the correct parents. In the interim, you have two profiles to help keep research with the proper subject as it develops.

Answer 2

Neal, these have apparently had merges proposed before, which were changed to unmerged matches by one of the profile managers.  There are also notes in one profile indicating that they are definitely 2 different people, although a good deal of sorting remains to be done.  It appears that one lived in Virginia and the other lived in Scotland and they were not necessarily related to each other at all.

Comments

The wife Margaret Cory did not have two distinct husbands named James Gibson.  In that sense the two James Gibsons are the same person.  However, relative to parentage the two James Gibsons are distinct.  As I read the profiles, their fathers are brothers and therefore they are first cousins.  They are unrelated to me.

T. Stanton's solution seems very reasonable to me.  Is it what other people think is the best solution?  The 'unmatched merge' route leaves Margaret with two distinct husbands with the same name.

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If this has been an ongoing, unresolved issue, it is perhaps time for either one or both Scotland Project and US Southern Colonies Project to step in and assist in the resolution and then, if necessary, project protect profiles. I have retagged the question to include USSC.

Answer 3

This comment isn't aimed at you Neal or anyone else on WikiTree, but I think some fairly confusing genealogy has found it's way to WikiTree.

For instance the only source on Margaret Eleanor Cory's profile page is a marriage in Scotland of a Margaret Corrie the daughter of Robert Corrie, to James Gibson, but currently the profile has a Samuel Rodman Cory as her father, which raises questions - 

• Did Samuel Rodman Cory (an unsourced profile) exist and have a daughter Margaret?
• If so - is she totally separate from Margaret Corrie who married James Gibson?
   

As for the Gibson genealogy, many profiles which are unsourced; several of them have more than one given name (as does Margaret Eleanor) which is very rare in this time period and when we find a profile with two or more names, then it often means that at some point someone has combined two different people to make a particular connection, or genealogy fit.

I think that more research into these genealogies might resolve the question about what to do with the two James Gibson profiles, or even whether someone named Margaret Eleanor Cory actually existed.

Comments

I agree that more research is needed.  

Also, I noticed that the only source for the profile lists a marriage year which is differrent from the year in the marriage date field.

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Interestingly there is a FindAGrave for a Samuel Rodman Cory and his wife Margaret Ellen Higginson, the supposed parents of Margaret Eleanor Cory, but they are much more recent than the profiles on WikiTree.

I wonder what the chances are of the exact same names appearing 2 centuries apart?  Or whether the more recent couple have had their birth dates transposed into the past?

The don't appear to have a daughter Margaret Eleanor. 

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I wonder what the chances are of the exact same names appearing 2 centuries apart? 

commented by John Atkinson

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A lot greater than you might think — having detached several instances of children born 100-plus, or 200-plus years before the supposed parents on FamilySearch, just because the names of the married couple are exactly the same as the parents of the incorrectly attached child/ren.
Sometimes sorting through the resultant mess just to get to what you need for the line you are researching is enough to drive you crazy (crazier).

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Answer 4

The death claims of both James Gibson profiles & the children attached to Gibson-5627 are clearly based on the same will, made by James Gibson in Bedford County, Virginia, on 14 Apr 1764 & proved 26 Feb 1765 (Bedford County WB 1, p. 20).  There was obviously only one James Gibson who made that will, so one of these profiles represents him and the other is either a duplicate or is conflated with him.  I may just be missing it, but I don't see any source in either profile which persuasively connects the James Gibson who made that will to a James Gibson that was born to either set of parents attached to the profiles, and the narrative in Gibson-5627 makes clear that the origins of the Bedford County James are disputed and uncertain.  I also don't see any persuasive evidence that connects the James Gibson who married Margaret Corey in Dumfries in 1707 to the one who made his will in Bedford County 1764.  In fact, Gibson-5627 suggests that the Bedford County man's wife was named Eleanor based on deed records.  The effort to reconcile an inconvenient conflict like that by making Margaret Corey's middle name Eleanor is usually a red flag for conflation, as middle names were very rare among English settlers in the southern colonies before the Revolution.

My suggestion would be to designate one or the other of these James Gibsons as the one who made the 1764 will in Bedford County and whose wife was Eleanor (__), and I would detach the current spouse & add a new Eleanor (__)  as his spouse based on the deed records, assuming that those deed records supporting the spouse claim can be cited in the profile.  Then, the other James Gibson profile can be cleaned up to represent either the James Gibson who married Margaret Corey and/or one of the James Gibsons whose birth/baptism records are cited in the profiles.  If there is evidence that comes to light establishing that any of these James Gibsons are actually the same person, then they can be merged at that point.