Background
I am trying to help a friend with an SAR application and am setting up a separate database in RM to track my documentation and research.
If I work up through his ancestors as he provided them, I get to his 3x grandmother and then hit a brick wall connecting to the next generation as he provided. Both FS and public trees on Ancestry show no parents.
If I jump out to his Rev War patriot and work “down” through his descendants, I get to a person with the same name and birth year on FS, but there is a different FS ID number than person above.
My question is if I set up this scenario in a small RM data base (two people with the same name), one with ancestors and one with descendants then merge them once I am confident they are the same person, will the descendants and ancestors connect to the merged individual?
Yes. (I tried stopping after just saying “yes”, but the forum wants at least 20 characters in my reply.)
The 20 character thing happened to me recently. I believe I got around it by quoting the OP’s question followed by my short answer.
You probably already know this, but once you have that line merged within RM, then the real work begins. You will need to document thoroughly the links between the generations through vital records, family Bible entries, census records, deeds, wills, etc. You might be able to get some of the original papers for that “patriot” and see what actual records they used. Document each birth, death, and marriage in your database for your friend. Unfortunately most lineage society societies now require better documentation than they did years ago. Often one has to reprove every link.
My mother’s stepmother got into a lineage society. We inherited her paperwork, and it was such a mess that I can’t tell how reliable her ancestry is - and I was working without using it.