What do you do when you discover a mistake in your Tree?

Oh dear. I think your idea of publishing just that family as a public tree somewhere is a good one. I have had the odd incidence like this in my research too and I have ended up leaving the people in my tree on my computer, once decoupled from the wrong place, as I've never found any program where it was easy to delete out a branch wholesale. Most I've used let you export the branch to a new file easily enough, but don't delete the line in the main file.

 

That takes me back Tim (before LC ) and in my early research days when I latched on to a branch of my maternal Adams Tree and with the aid of Ancestry Public Trees soon had quite an array of names. It was entirely of my own doing as I became convinced a great x 3 Adams grandfather was the continuation of the line. Not anywhere near your head count, but a quarter at least.

The problem was compounded (embarrassment wise) because I picked up two very active contacts who were welcoming me into the fold as a long lost cousin and even receiving photos from them. Then WHAM, BHAM - can't remember the whys and wherefores now - but what began as a little cloud of doubt, soon developed into thunder clouds of despair. And think of all that work!

I had to get in touch with each Contact and own up to my mistake, and I think regrettably all round wave goodbye and thank them for all their help. I had to remove names one by one starting at the bottom upwards as Alexander suggests. Not just from Ancestry -although that was the most important - but from my own Tree (FTL) and Genes although the latter was easy as I just uploaded a Gedcom via Ancestry.

It can happen and the only thing to do is to recognise the mistake, take corrective actions such as the options available (you will know best on that) and move on. Good luck!

 

Oh dear Tim isn't it soul destroying when that happens? but what is it that they say? "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" I think the idea of saving the work that you have done, is a really good idea because as Alexander says you may find that the work you have done on that branch may still be related in some way to your tre,e so to delete it completely might not be a good idea. I'm a hoarder so I would keep it and who knows you may be pleasantly surprised some time in the future Good Luck !

 

Peter, without going into great detail, but in generic terms, how would it be easy in Genopro when used as a main Database ?

I use Genopro but not in a collective Data base sense, but to enter branches of my Tree manually into individual named Genopro Charts. I then laminate the chart, keep in a binder and send a copy to that arm of the family which are gratefully received.

 

Recently, I had a somewhat similar experience to Tim where 2 groups of 4 matches were identified in LC and then it became apparent that one or more mistakes had been made and they were not the same family. There was actually a spelling difference in the surname for one group of matches! This was a much simpler situation than Tim describes and only took a few minutes to remove the census references from LC, after which I advised the other contacts as to what I had done so that they would not be confused.

It was a bit of a chore to make the deletions in LC as the My Ancestors report kept moving back to the top between deletions. Perhaps I should have used the Name sort sequence but the Household view did keep everything together so that nothing was forgotten.

Fortunately, I do still use GenoPro and disconnecting the descendents from my 'tree' took only a few seconds.

I keep a separate tree for each surname to avoid large complicated diagrams. External links are made between each tree as appropriate and some trees are split further (via internal links) if they get too big. Because GenoPro provides a simple and quick way to split off part of a tree as a standard feature, there was nothing complicated and all the data remained in tact, just in case I find a family link sometime in the future. The disconnected branch can then remain as a dormant branch until I reconnect it at an appropriate point, or send to someone else who is investigating that line.

The only downside that I have found with this 'separate tree' format is that I cannot work on the whole family as a single entity, as when using FTA. If GenoPro were still being developed, I would ask for a change to the script which produces reports, including gedcom files. If external links to .gno files were to be (optionally) handled like the internal links then I could have the best of both worlds. I used to do a LOT of programming in various languages but feel that I am now rather out of touch to make such changes without guidance from the developers. It would be just too easy to overlook some small detail and then spend enormous amounts of time investigating apparent anomalies when using the revised code.

 

Don't get rid of it - you've spent time and effort on it, so it's worth keeping somewhere. You may well find you are connected as Alexander says, but by a different route - if you found that and you'd deleted it, then what would you be thinking? Perhaps you shouldn't answer that!