If I take this tree over , which line do I follow Hagar or Hager - they are intermixed under 79.

Question

I have been researching the HAGAR line for at least 20 years and it is a bear - unfortunately most people have not taken the time to separate the two families and 79 has intermixed HAGAR & HAGER and they are totally different lines. They also started with the first Ancestor rather than the current family and back. How do I handle this (correct) or just delete it completely. Help!

Diane Kepus

Comments

No deletions.

This issue is the same as any ancestor who’s connected in error:  make the case, then remove or ask for removal, explaining your reasons in the notes, and notifying the managers of your intent. Don’t let the differences in spelling throw you. This happens even where the spellings are the same.

Answer 1

I have no idea who originally posted the work.

As a collaborative one-world tree, there may be one person that added all these Hagers/Hagars or many people. Since they were originally added one or many people may have worked one them. If you click on the "Changes" tab, you can see the whole history of changes for every profile—data edits, biography revisions, new connections, detached connections, sources added or deleted, etc.

Since my line is proven, do I delete the Hager unproven in that line.

First, as you work on correcting these profiles and their connections, it's important to remember that you're not working on "your" line—you're working on everyone's line. The profiles that are connected to the wrong people or are conflated with others belong somewhere, if not the place they are right now. I find it helpful to think of the work that I'm doing as "correcting WikiTree" rather than my own ancestors. Just because something isn't "my line" I try not to just disconnect profiles without, at the very least, adding sources and notes that explain why it was done.

My process might be:

• Gather sources and citations for the profile, especially those that prove connections such as his or her spouse, children and parents
• Revise the narrative biography and add inline citations to sources for all the relationships. 
• Add a Research Notes section and write some notes about people you've detached and why. For example, if you're detaching a child say something like "JoeBob Hager-123 has been detached as a child of X and Y. We know that X mentioned all of his children in his will/JoeBob's baptism states his parents were Z and A/other evidence, so JoeBob is not one of X's children."
• Go to the profile of the child I'm detaching, revise the profile as above and add research notes. Then detach from the people that are the wrong parents (and hopefully attach to the correct parents). Repeat as needed for each child.

My approach would be more or less the same for a conflated profile. First, I'd have to figure out if there was already a second profile that represented one of the people. If not, I make a new one for the second person. Which person is the "second person" depends on the history of the profile (based on the change log) and how complicated its going to be to extract one or the other profile. Even if the original profile was intended to be person A, has been conflated with B, but is now connected to ALL of B's 19 children and three wives, it may be easier to make a new profile for A.

To make a profile for A, I need some sources, so I may need to do some research. With luck I can find some other profiles to connect A to that are already on WikiTree. Or maybe some of the children on the conflated profile belong to A.

Throughout all of this, I confer with any other existing profile managers for the profiles I want to detach or make significant changes to.

The kind of work you're taking on can be slow, complicated and sometimes tedious. Sadly it often flies under the radar, so it can be unappreciated, too. It's too bad we don't have a badge for "Fixed a big conflated mess."

Comments

I feel your pain.... As a beginner, I was on the other side of one of these types of messes. My error was following the 95 percent of the internet that believes "Hoar" and "Eure" are variants of the same name. (I am a Hoar descendant.) A person who had studied the Eure lines for decades set me straight, very gently and kindly, explaining the reasons and the sources he had gathered which proved the point. I thanked him and disconnected my Hoar ancestors from the Eure lines.

And because my beginner mistake was treated with kindness, when somebody did it to me (changed my proven 3rd great grandfather to someone unrelated) I messaged him and asked if he had any evidence to support this change (other than a single Findagrave entry, and Findagrave is not known for its reliability). He did not reply. I changed the profiles back and put a lengthy explanation of all the sources and evidence I had compiled into the research notes. I put the same information into his wife's profile, my 3rd great grandmother, as she was the one alleged to have been married to somebody else, and those of their 3 sons.

All that to say... because a major error on my part was corrected gently and kindly, I try to pay it forward. At least publicly. Privately, I will confess to quite a lot of growling under my breath as I painstakingly changed back the profiles that were affected by the incorrect change in the identity of my 3rd great grandfather.

And I wish you success in untangling the issues in your own lines. I too have a surname with variant spellings, and yet most if not all of us on the west side of the pond are part of the same family.

Answer 2

You won't be able to delete it.  We don't delete profiles on WikiTree.  You may also find that, since our ancestors often did not know how to spell their own name, some in the same line might have spelled it Hagar, some (in the same line) Hager.  You'll just have to be very sure you have the right person when you are researching.

Comments

The 2nd part of my question was not answered. I understand how the names can be mixed and mis-spelled, but 79 has mixed the Hagar and Hager lines. I am a Hagar and have proven my work by finding documents to back me up. Since my line is proven, do I delete the Hager unproven in that line. I have no idea who originally posted the work.

Diane Kepus

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I repeat: you cannot delete the profiles.  This is not a suggestion.  The computer system will not let you do it.

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Thank you so much for responding. I know it will be slow, but it is also the line I am working on for myself right now. I just finally proved mine to the Mayflower. TY again! I only asked about the deletion part because every site is different and I am still learning all the step here.

Diane Kepus

Answer 3

As Ros already wrote, you cannot delete the profiles.

As Ros also wrote, mixing of the name can be correct. Even my grandmother has a mispelled name.

What you can do:

Start at a special Profile which person you know very well, maybe your own profile. Than check each connection from this profile: parents, siblings, spouses and children. If it is a connection, you can prove, than it's okay. If it is an unknown connection, it may still be correct. Only if you can prove, that a connection is wrong, than you can remove the connection. But you should explain it in the change description. And you can explain it in a research notes section. Otherwise after a while another person could reestablish the connection.

So you need to invest time, checking and weighing up. It can be a hard and slow doing. But it's a better way than deleting all unknown connections.