08 Apr 2018

After many many months and hundreds of hours, all the media files that, disastrously became detached during the import from Ancestry.co.uk, have been re-attached.

I say 'reattached' but in truth it was far more than that.  The opportunity was taken to critically examine each item to validate its relevance and accuracy.  Many of the items were originated by other Ancestry members, with varying levels of due diligence applied at the point of origin.

 

At the start there were about 2,500 detached items and we have finished with 1,321 attached items.  There were many duplicates, many were nothing to do with us at all (cases of misidentification) and many were illegible so, not only could I not figure out who they belonged to, but it would have been pointless re-attaching them. 

 

Also, along the way, about 500 people have been added to the tree - mostly family members who appeared on a census form but weren't on the tree.  The principal reason is that Ancestry members would "prove" a single member of a family on a census return, but ignore other family members who had no direct relevance to them.  That said, a lot of the duplicates were caused by Ancestry members who had decided to record other family members on a census, but then added the same census form attachment multiple times, one for each family member, instead of linking all family members to a single copy

Many corrections were made to dates because another typical trait from the Ancestry members was to record a baptism date as a birth date and, at the other end of the spectrum, a burial date as a death date.

Discrepancies were identified that could not immediately be resolved and **notes entered to the system to indicate the need for further research.  These are our next action items, and Sheila has already made a start (whilst also starting to document the Wheatley / Blampied family.)

Conclusion

The quantity and quality of data in OurFamilyHistory is much improved as a result of this 'disaster.'  Every cloud has a silver lining!