A read-only verification and relabel of the archive against FamilySearch and published genealogical scholarship. No genealogical content was deleted; claims were re-tiered, cited, and, where a claim is disputed in published scholarship, relocated to the archive basement as labeled family tradition.
Methodology principle: lead with what was found, not with what was hoped for. Every claim carries a confidence tier; where the evidence runs out, the archive says so.
01-inventory.json, 01-inventory.v2.json), every named
ancestor and FamilySearch PID rendered across 70 pages, plus the
parent-child chain edges the site asserts.02-fs-verification.json / .md), every
unique PID resolved against the FamilySearch beta Family Tree API, with
source classification per person and per parent-child edge. Read-only;
no FS data modified.03-gateway-crossref.json / .md), every
pre-1750 ancestor checked against accepted gateway scholarship
(Hereditary.us / Taylor & Murphy; Richardson; Roberts; Weis; Faris; the
General Society of Mayflower Descendants)./basement#plantagenet-claim) as labeled, disputed family
tradition with full dispute citations; the standalone royal ancestor and
cousin pages were removed and redirect there; all royal framing was removed
from outward-facing pages, meta, and heraldry.Hannah Coffin (M7FZ-T6T) parentage: RESOLVED. The audit framework's deep edge-sourcing pass (2026-05-30) surfaced a conflict between two compilations on whether Hannah's father was John or James Coffin. Subsequent web research confirmed James Coffin via three independent sources: Find a Grave Memorial for Richard Gardner Jr. (cited gravestone-level), Coffinquest Rootsweb (listing Hannah among James's children with siblings Samuel and Deborah), and Geni's Mary Coffin profile (Hannah's sister, same parents). The archive's previous "through John, not James" framing has been corrected to "through James, not John." The corrected edge has been added to the sourced list in audit/04. Documented example of the audit framework catching and resolving an inherited error.
Downstream follow-up (queued as Audit Pass 8): the cousin-distance summaries that were computed on Tristram as the shared ancestor (Lucretia Coffin Mott, General John Coffin, Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, Charles A. Coffin, and John Coffin of Quebec) now share James Coffin (one generation closer). Those distances are flagged pending recomputation; the direct-line father-fact has been corrected to James everywhere, and the distance numbers carry a visible pending note rather than invented values.
Benjamin Franklin cousin distance: RESOLVED at 1st cousin, 10 times removed. This figure was corrected twice. An interim S62 edit had stated 1st cousin, 9 times removed, applying the standard NEHGS cousin-math to an eleven-generation chain count. A FamilySearch relationship-view verification on Peter Folger (May 2026) confirmed the maternal chain is twelve generations from John back to Peter Folger, so the canonical figure is 1st cousin, 10 times removed (cousin degree = min(12, 2) minus 1 = 1; removed = absolute value of 12 minus 2 = 10). That is consistent with the Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold V distance of 4th cousin, 7 times removed, computed on the same twelve-step depth via the shared Westcott ancestor. The S62 nine-times figure was a good-faith application of the right method to a one-generation undercount; it was reversed across every surface and the correct figure restored. The correction history, formerly carried in an "Honest Acknowledgments" section on /lines/folger, now lives here; the line page states the figure and links to this report.
| Tier | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Verified | Edge confirmed in FamilySearch and backed by a primary or derivative record, or held in the family archive |
| Sourced | The edge has some source, but none primary |
| FS-Tree-Only | Asserted in the FamilySearch Family Tree (a collaborative wiki tree) with no source on the relationship conclusion |
| Traditional | Oral history or traditional genealogy |
| Traditional, Disputed | Traditional, with a published scholarly dispute (shown with a ⚠ and a distinct color) |
| Research-in-Progress | Actively being investigated |
| Inherited Evidence | Primary-source artifact in the family archive |
| Gap | No PID, or FamilySearch does not assert the edge |
Full machine-readable data: audit/02-fs-verification.json,
audit/03-gateway-crossref.json. This report and the relabel were produced in
the 2026 audit pass; the verification scripts are retained alongside for
re-runnability.