Ancestry Doublets, Triplets and Quadruplets (find, search, percentage, accuracy)

[Mircea]

When you finish your tree as far as you can go, you're not done.

When Ancestry says your tree has 10,000 entries, it really doesn't, because about 5%-10% of those will be doublets and triplets, so you really only have between 9,000 to 9,500 people in your tree.

You cannot see doublets and triplets in Tree View. That's not even possible.

To see all of your many doublets and triplets, go to "View Tree." In the upper right-hand corner is the "Find Person" menu. Click on the down-arrow and a list of options will appear.

The last option is "List of All People."

Click on that. It will bring up a alphabetical listing by last name of everyone in your tree, with birth and death data (if available).

Now, scroll, line-by-line through every person in your tree. You will come across identical names, birth and death data listed twice or even three or four times. Those are the doublets, triplets and quadruplets, because they are the exact same people.

When you come across one, and all the names are in blue color, while birth and death data in black color, you need only click on the first occurrence of the doublet or triplet.

That will call up that person's profile.

On the profile page, there are three menu options in the upper right-hand corner. Click on the down-arrow for the "Tools" option.

Click on the "Merge with Duplicate" option.

That brings up the Merge Duplicate People page, with Person 1 on the left and Person 2 on the right. Click on the green "Select" button. That will give you the name, birth and death data for both person, including the number of sources for that data or person.

In most cases, it's a no-brainer, but if you do doubt, you will notice the olive-green "Compare" button in the center of the page.

The Compare window will show not only the person's name, birth and death data, but also their relationship in your tree, along with the sources. You may close the window at any time without any consequences or action being taken.

If you are satisfied they are the same person, then click on the orange "Merge" button below, and the two separate data records for each person will be merged into a single data record, preserving both the relationships in your tree and all associated records.

In the case of a triplet or quadruplet, you'll have to repeat the procedure starting with the "Tools" menu additional times, so that they are merged into one single record.

Why does Ancestry do that? According to them, one or more records may be created depending on a person's role in the tree.

I have no idea what that means. I'm assuming that by "role" Ancestry means parent, spouse, sibling or child. I intend to contact them to get clarification on that.

Anyway, you all need to be aware of that.

Also, note you can merge anyone with anyone else. From the Merge Duplicate Person page you can select anyone you want by typing in a name.

If your family is from the South or rural areas, they have a habit of using middle names or nick-names on census records. It's not unusual to see a Ray and a Millie, and then the next census there's a Robert and a Mildred. They're the same people. You can delete the duplicates if you want, but if you already have records for each, then it might make more sense to merge them, so that you don't have to waste valuable time re-adding records you already added once.

[PA2UK]

In FTM (which syncs with your Ancestry tree), there is an option to find duplicate people so you don't have to manually go through every single person.

[cjseliga]

I always wondered about huge, ginormous family trees that people constructed.

I realize some have 10,000 or 20,000 or even 40,000 (which seems kinda crazy!) people in their tree, and of course, I assume, they are trying to be as accurate as one possibly can, at least I hope people are, but what percentage, for those with these "mega trees", would you say your tree is on accuracy? 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%?

And I'm mostly talking about names, and I guess birth/death dates, although, when you get back hundreds of years, really accurate dates are not the easiest thing to verify.

[ashbeeigh]

There is also a tool within MyHeritage that will run a report for large trees. It is pricey (but also includes all the databases and the ability to upload large trees). A full membership with the tool was $160 with tax included. It was a good tool and helped my knock out a lot of my doubles and check birth dates of my far off English ancestors that I added in bulk when I started my tree years ago.

From the Home > Family Tree > More > Consistency Checker. It will run a number of checks to include doubles, birth date inconsistencies, location name consistencies and double/triple source info (which is silly because its nice to know birth, employment, death, etc) locations are consistent. There is also a way to not check for those types of things too within preferences.

I just reran my report and have 55 children older then their parents, 108 children born after the death of their parents, 14 who died too old, 123 parents too young to have children, 86 too old to have children, 47 facts occurring after the death, 30 facts before birth, 33 siblings with close age 12 large spouse age differences, 72 married too young, 4 died too young to have a spouse, 148 multiple marriages of same couple, 50 married name same as maiden name, 2 suffix as first name, 2 year with two digits, 6 disconnected for a tree, 115 siblings with same name, 1 double space in their name, 178 inconsistent last name spelling, 6 inconsistent name spellings.

Like Mircea said, the job isn't done by any stretch. Glancing at my names it is primarily my pre-1600s English and Swedish sides that have the issues.

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by cjseliga

I always wondered about huge, ginormous family trees that people constructed.

I realize some have 10,000 or 20,000 or even 40,000 (which seems kinda crazy!) people in their tree, and of course, I assume, they are trying to be as accurate as one possibly can, at least I hope people are, but what percentage, for those with these "mega trees", would you say your tree is on accuracy? 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%?

And I'm mostly talking about names, and I guess birth/death dates, although, when you get back hundreds of years, really accurate dates are not the easiest thing to verify.

I have over 15,000 - it's mostly descendants of my ancestors. I'm very cautious and if I'm uncertain about a particular person, I do not add them (or at least I don't add their descendancy). However, with the aid of DNA matches, many lines can be verified. Of course, I am not infallible but I'd estimate at least 99% is accurate.

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by cjseliga

I always wondered about huge, ginormous family trees that people constructed.

I realize some have 10,000 or 20,000 or even 40,000 (which seems kinda crazy!) people in their tree, and of course, I assume, they are trying to be as accurate as one possibly can, at least I hope people are, but what percentage, for those with these "mega trees", would you say your tree is on accuracy? 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%?

That would depend upon how good a genealogist the person is.

The numbers aren't "crazy" at all.

I have ~9,900 for my paternal grandfather's paternal family.

In other words, that's only my paternal grandfather's parents and their parents and all of their siblings and does not yet include my paternal grandmother's side of the family.

I'll probably add another 9,000 people or so, and then start on my paternal grandmother's side of the family, and that will be another 18,000 or so people, making it ~40,000 for that tree and adding my maternal side of the family will make it about 90,000 people.

Everyone builds trees differently.

I start at the bottom and go generation by generation. So, I did my father's siblings and descendants, and then my grandfather's siblings and descendants, then my great-grandfather's siblings and descendants and now I'm working his parents and grandparents and their siblings and descendants

A lot of it depends on how many siblings I can find out of the "Dead Zone" (that period 1800 to 1840). It's a lot of work to do that.

Fortunately, my family all lived in rural areas where it was quite common for sons and sons-in-law to build houses on the father's property. So, when you see in the 1840 Census there is one Free White Male Age 10-14, then you now he's going to be age 20-24 in the 1850 Census.

When you look at the housing order in the 1840 Census, you might see Smith, Roberts, Jones and then in 1850 you'll see Smith, Roberts, Roberts, Jones. I guarantee you that's his son. Sometimes where they built the home affects the housing order, so in 1840 you might see Smith, Roberts, Jones, Johnson and then in 1850 it's Smith, Roberts, Jones, Roberts, Johnson. I guarantee you that's his son, too.

You also might see in 1850 Smith, Roberts, Brown, Jones. That's a good possibility that Mr Brown married one of Roberts's daughters and he let them build a house on the property.

90% of the time, children lived in the same county they were born, so if you compare the 1840 Census with the 1850 Census you can usually find them, although it's a lot of time to look through it all. If they didn't build a house on their father's property, they still probably live in the same census district/zone, so if you start there and spiral out, you can save some time.

It's best to use Family Search when doing that, because Ancestry is not search-friendly.

[jiminnm]

Most duplicates get into one's Ancestry tree by not being careful when adding people via hints. The name matching in Ancestry leaves a lot to be desired. I have just under 6,000 people in my tree and, having earned my lesson early on, would be surprised in there are any duplicates. Based on message board posts, some people think they have duplicates when they don't. They see them in the Family View Tree, which shows the same person in any relationship to the hojme person. I have numerous individuals related to me in two or three different ways.

[residinghere2007]

I agree that most duplicates in trees are people not being careful.


There are a few people who have trees with my relatives on them and over 20,000 people and all of them have multiple, multiple, multiple duplicates on their trees.


My own tree has just shy of 4000 people and I wouldn't say I have no duplicates at all, but I do go back and review family lines and will correct them immediately when I see them. I also don't have a habit of adding people to my tree based on other trees. I've found that often people have a lot of duplicates on their tree by just copying that info from someone else's tree without checking to see if the individuals in those records/trees are already on their own.

[suzy_q2010]

I suspect everyone has duplicates. I use RootsMagic, which has a tool to find them and allow you to merge them.

It's easy to create a duplicate when the person was initially added to the tree in the past and it's been long enough that you do not recognize the name.

[brownbagg]

Originally Posted by cjseliga

i assume, they are trying to be as accurate as one possibly can, at least i hope people are, but what percentage, for those with these "mega trees", would you say your tree is on accuracy? 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%?

40%