On 12/10/2014 12:02 AM, Steve Hayes wrote: > On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 20:06:39 +0000, Jenny M Benson <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> I am quite used to having to enter a "Birthdate" when what I am actually >> searching for is a Baptism (yes, Ancestry, I'm looking at you) and now I >> find the "Date of Death" of many of my relatives is recorded amongst >> FMP's Hampshire Burials records. I *presume* the dates shown are >> actually of Burials but there is nothing in these transcriptions to >> indicate of what, exactly, these are transcriptions. Again, I can only >> *presume* they are of PRs or BTs (but which?) but maybe they are from >> something else. > > I've has a similar problem with some thing's I'm copying from someone else's > tree. She has access to the original church records and I don't. She strikes > me as a careful researcher, so I think the information is accurate, but I > still find it odd when she has entered the name of the church in the Birth > field in the GEDCOM file she sent me. That could be in the Source field, yes, > but the person was surely not born in the church. So I just leave it out. > > But with burials, what do I do? > > If it appears in the death field, there would surely be only a very few cases > where the person died in the church, so I put it in the burial field, and if > it has a date like 15 May 1740, I put the death date as May 1740. If the date > is 1 May 1740, I put the death date as Abt Apr 1740. > > In most cases (before refrigeration) burial took place within a couple of days > of death, though in places with harsh winters they may have stored the body in > a shed somewhere until the ground had thawed enough to be easy to dig. > > While I understand the difference between birth/christening date and death/burial dates. You have to use what you can find. In the greater scheme of things does it matter if a person died on the 4th or 8th of the month? Even when you have a date for either, you are dependent on the accuracy of the person recording the information. Was the person birth at 11:45 pm or a half hour later at at 12:15am the next day? Was the death date the date of biological death or was it the date the person recording the information made the entry. Was the death date the date the Obituary appeared in the newspaper? I have one "date of death" that is the date the husband bought his wife casket in 1863. I believe that it was probably that the casket was purchased after the biological death, and probably with in a few days of the biological death. In 14 years of research this is the closet I have found to a date of death. The only thing you can do is record the dates you find and record them as they appear in the document where they were found. As with my casket date of death you record EVERYTHING in notes. While you can lower the priority for searching for the date of death, you should always be aware as you search archives that there may be a better dates or better information. You never finish your genealogy research.

On Wed, 10 Dec 2014 08:17:55 -0500, Keith Nuttle <[email protected]> wrote: >On 12/10/2014 12:02 AM, Steve Hayes wrote: >> On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 20:06:39 +0000, Jenny M Benson <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> I am quite used to having to enter a "Birthdate" when what I am actually >>> searching for is a Baptism (yes, Ancestry, I'm looking at you) and now I >>> find the "Date of Death" of many of my relatives is recorded amongst >>> FMP's Hampshire Burials records. I *presume* the dates shown are >>> actually of Burials but there is nothing in these transcriptions to >>> indicate of what, exactly, these are transcriptions. Again, I can only >>> *presume* they are of PRs or BTs (but which?) but maybe they are from >>> something else. >> >> I've has a similar problem with some thing's I'm copying from someone else's >> tree. She has access to the original church records and I don't. She strikes >> me as a careful researcher, so I think the information is accurate, but I >> still find it odd when she has entered the name of the church in the Birth >> field in the GEDCOM file she sent me. That could be in the Source field, yes, >> but the person was surely not born in the church. So I just leave it out. >> >> But with burials, what do I do? >> >> If it appears in the death field, there would surely be only a very few cases >> where the person died in the church, so I put it in the burial field, and if >> it has a date like 15 May 1740, I put the death date as May 1740. If the date >> is 1 May 1740, I put the death date as Abt Apr 1740. >> >> In most cases (before refrigeration) burial took place within a couple of days >> of death, though in places with harsh winters they may have stored the body in >> a shed somewhere until the ground had thawed enough to be easy to dig. >> >> >While I understand the difference between birth/christening date and >death/burial dates. You have to use what you can find. In the greater >scheme of things does it matter if a person died on the 4th or 8th of >the month? > It does if you're hoping to find matches done by computerised systems, not all of which will show "near misses" (e.g. same month, different day). >Even when you have a date for either, you are dependent on the accuracy >of the person recording the information. Was the person birth at 11:45 >pm or a half hour later at at 12:15am the next day? Was the death date >the date of biological death or was it the date the person recording the >information made the entry. Was the death date the date the Obituary >appeared in the newspaper? > In most cases it doesn't matter that much if the _recorded_ date is consistent as long as the error isn't anomolous serious (e.g. buried before they died or baptised before birth) or serious (e.g. the wrong year when a December event has been registered in January and careless transcription has recorded the new year). >I have one "date of death" that is the date the husband bought his wife >casket in 1863. I believe that it was probably that the casket was >purchased after the biological death, and probably with in a few days of >the biological death. In 14 years of research this is the closet I have >found to a date of death. > >The only thing you can do is record the dates you find and record them >as they appear in the document where they were found. As with my casket >date of death you record EVERYTHING in notes. > Where it will be accepted, it is often safe to record the year alone or the month and the year depending on how long it was reasonable to have had a body lying around. "Found dead"s can be a bit awkward if the judicial process decides an earlier date than the one on the death registration and that is not added to the death registration. >While you can lower the >priority for searching for the date of death, you should always be aware >as you search archives that there may be a better dates or better >information. You never finish your genealogy research.