Genealogy Chat

I have been locating ancestors both from research sites - Censuses (Censii?), LDS and assorted others together with information from members trees ... and I have made a fundamental error. I had taken my paternal grandfather - Samuel Jukes - as being from one branch of the family and built fore and aft from him only to discover, very recently, that I have the wrong 'Samuel'. OK - the tree prior to either and/or both Samuels is valid, but the tree from Samuel to the present day descends from the 'wrong' Samuel.

Question - can I, and, if so, how would I, transfer the descendants of one Samuel to the other without a complete re-write of my tree.

All and, indeed, any help will be appreciated - I cannot think that I am the first to have made this error ... I doubt I will be the last ... but ... how do I make the repair?

Many thanks in anticipation - John

Do you refer to your tree on GR?

If so, I doubt that you can.

You could try contacting GR support and asking them to try to sort it out for you - but bear in mind their lack of understanding of FH research.

Or build a correct tree elsewhere and import it to GR as a gedcom - and hope that it transfers accurately, which is not always the case

I don't use the GR tree so not sure but if all the details are correct apart from the details for the "samuel" you mention could you not just Edit his details? or are you saying that people attached to him are also wrong?

If the latter is the case then you will need to remove those attached to him such as children before you can remove him,

I'm sure someone will correct me if i'm wrong

It's good to see a member who recognises a mistake and is wanting to rectify the situation, Many just ignore the mistake and carry on regardless producing a fantasy tree which then gets copied by others as accurate

I keep separate trees on my PC, One is the fully documented tree and all the others are Work in progress, nothing gets added to my main tree based on Internet searches alone, Like you and many others i learned from my mistakes early on so only add when i have the original offical documents to back up the theory

Roy

Added as Reggie says contacting GR support they may be able to help

As suggested above, as it would appear that only his name is incorrect, you ought to be able to edit that and his BMD.

A problem might arise if you have given him the 'wrong' siblings. Some you might be able to edit, but there could be a problem if you need to delete some of the others.

GR might be able to do it for you once you've made the correcting edits

Many thanks to you all for your very rapid and interesting responses.

Yes, my tree has been constructed through my membership of GR.

Both Samuels are correct in their antecedents and siblings (as far as I am aware) - and, whilst from a common ancestor way back are from different sides of my family tree. I don't think that I can 'edit' the details for the 'wrong' Samuel without removing all the descendants I have attaching to him. The 'correct' Samuel has no (well, not yet anyway) descendants attaching. I want to attach the descendants from the 'wrong' Samuel to the 'right' Samuel - I am, putting it crudely, hoping that a 'cut and paste' might be an option ... but I suspect that it is not!

Both Porkie_Pie and +++DetEcTive+++ suggest that I keep a separate tree on my computer and only update this as and when the 'working' tree has been ratified - a sensible idea. Where would I find a computer resident tree - my OS is Linux rather that W7 or others of the Windows family of virus and advertising media catchers. I have 'GRAMPS' but do not like the fragmented view it gives of the tree - it also does not seemingly accept (or process perhaps) the full GEDCOM output from GR

There are several options for an OFF line tree, some you will need to buy but there are some that are available as FREE downloads,

I use what is now an old version of family tree maker but it still does the job and you can have multiple trees on it so i just open the one i'm working on at the time, (I keep my main tree backed up on disc)


If you Google " free family tree software downloads " there are plenty of results for free downloads

Roy

Note, In order to open a Gedcom in a tree format you need a program that supports it such as family tree software,

You can open a Gedcom using other programs such as Notepad but you will not recognise it as a family tree because it will be in text form with the codes attached that the software need to display it as a family tree when using the correct software

GEDCOM (an acronym standing for GEnealogical Data COMmunication) is a proprietary and open de facto[1] specification for exchanging genealogical data between different genealogy software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM

http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20090826141137344/FamilyHistory.html

I don't know anything about Linux, but the above link gives all the available options - or so it says.