That's a FANTASTIC question - should have covered it, so I'm pinning it to the top. If you have a couple that lived together, divorced, annulment, or were in a common law marriage, you can click on the pencil by the marriage and add an EVENT - see the down arrow at the right and change it from marriage to one of the other. They may not have even lived together, but there is no other option there. After you have done that, you see "Lived Together" under the couple, rather than "Marriage." You can also add date and place as well.

❤ @ancestryaimee Many have this issue in their trees, sometimes several times. It shows up especially where there is an NPE situation, they didn’t live together, may not have had a relationship (rape, one night stands, or even with in-vitro fertilization with a stranger’s DNA, etc). Sometimes it’s offensive to us that these sites infer a marriage when there is a child produced between two people. Then comes the adoption situations and how to set preferred parent, preferred partner, etc. Have you made or can you make a video about dealing with divergent / nonstandard relationships?

I’m a semi beginner but I’m so afraid of making mistakes

Everybody begins somewhere! Use a different program like Ancestry or MyHeritage or something you can put on your computer like Rootsmagic which syncs with FamilySearch. That’s a private program or a personal tree. Make your mistakes there and then you can share on FamilySearch when you know what you’ve got is right. It’ll save you a lot of time in the long run actually. Plus it’ll be a place where you have a secure tree in case somebody else makes changes.

Fantastic! So glad this is helping you!

Thanks for adding that!

Great suggestion! FS are you listening? You could add a note and even make it a caution note.

Hi Aimee and Bridget. On this question, there is a tasks area on your homepage on FS, lower right. When I was just getting started that is where I put my reminders of things I needed to do.@@AncestryAimee

So glad this is helpful to you!

Thanks Erica! It was terrific to meet you as well and I can’t wait for RT2025! Glad this video will be helpful to you.

You’re not alone. I like sharing with others but I absolutely have my tree on Ancestry!

You're so welcome!

The more I try to work with Family Search, the more I don't like working with the tree. I like the documents I get but I just don't find it a seamless experience.

It’s not very user friendly, that’s for sure.

Yes! That happens a lot. You can see it when you look at changes. If FamilySearch added the information/person - it came from a record such as that. :) Thanks so much Kristen!

Thank you! Glad it's helpful to you.

Look at the history or “latest changes” (on the left) and see if you can undo it there. I don’t have a video on that. Good suggestion. You can always reach out to FS help for additional help too.

If you change the relationships it should fix it. If not, reach out to FS help.

I haven’t actually addressed that. That’s a great question. Without seeing it I’m not actually sure, but I do think that it may have to do with the spouse. A parent will be listed twice if there is a discrepancy in the spouse. So I would check the marriages and add the missing parent to that child relationship and they should come together.

If you’ve tried removing the duplicate parent and it won’t “take”, try removing the child relationship instead.

You just have to determine who the correct parents are then change the relationships. Once corrected you’ll eliminate the loop.

I’m not sure how you mean that. I’m the tree it will show one of them. You can select the other though. Does that help?

FamilySearch doesn’t really delete people out of the tree. They’re probably in there somewhere you’re just not finding them. You probably deleted relationships more than the person, unless you had the person and nobody else had touched them. Then you could delete. I would search for the person thoroughly first. If you are still struggling, you may want to reach out to me for coaching. I could walk you through it. I have space in my Wednesday group coaching session at 12:30 PM Pacific time. It’s on the second Wednesdays and it’s only $35.

If this is an Ancestry tree, the other people are still there! They’re in what you might call an orphaned branch-it’s not connected to the main tree, so you won’t see it. Go to the Tree Overview. On the right side, you’ll see the home person, the last person you worked on, and then a Summary section. Under Summary, click on People. EVERYONE who is part of the “tree,” even members of those orphaned branches, will be listed there, with all the sources, media, etc you had previously attached to them. If you know the name of one of the parents of the person you deleted, then re-added, you can find them there, click their name, and then edit the relevant relationships to that person.

PS - I have used this “people” list to help me find possible duplicates that might have been added over time, too!

Greats additions. Thanks Kristen!

I was the initial person asking. I don’t know the names. The names were generated by other trees. I can’t look up documents because no access in Cuba

Good point. Yeah. They won’t. I would leave it there and just not have it standardized.

Good question. I don’t know. They have him locked down so the generations around him are pretty reliable. I would be interested in the folks in your tree between you.

@@AncestryAimee do you have an email I can use to send the tree information Randy

Hi Randy. My husband is related to Abe Lincoln on Abe's maternal side. Abraham's family tree includes several locations in central Kentucky (Boyle, Mercer, Marion, and a few others). One thing you can do is check your own tree for any family that may have been in that area at any time, and start looking there. You can also follow the suggested path of relationship and look at the amount and quality of research done along the way and determine if there are still questions. Though Lincoln has no living descendants today, there are many people living who are related to him in some other cousin type connection. Some relationships are more direct than others, and are of varying degrees. If your suggested connection is on the Lincoln (Abraham's paternal) side, I believe there is less controversy involved on that side of the tree. Lincoln's maternal side had some big question marks and disagreements in the past, and there has been some DNA studies done to help determine the family his mother belonged to and conclusions made based on that. Some of that information I believe is available (including a web link for more info) on the profile page (check the Sources and Collaboration tabs) for Abraham Lincoln on FamilySearch. I recently viewed that profile and it appeared to reflect the conclusions of the DNA study. You can also get ahold of the Forkland Community Center in Boyle County, KY and ask for information from them. They have a small family history center that contains information about many of the families in central Kentucky who have known connections to Abraham. They have a Facebook page and recently posted that they have just acquired a large collection from a genealogist that pertains to Abraham Lincoln, but didn't go into detail about what all that includes. Their Facebook page does have an email address for contact, and they give times when their center is open to the public, but I'm not sure if any material they have has been digitized. I hope this helps you.