Tom: There were three reasons for excluding any WELLS born after 1900: 1) most researchers have traced their roots back to someone who was born before 1900 ... so it there is going to be a connection with an unknown researcher, you should be able to find it in the 'before 1901 group". 2) with the longevity of people's lives now (both of my maternal grandparents lived to be 100 -- actually grandpa was 104 when he passed), so there was always a chance that rather than not knowing when they died that they were actually still living. I did not want to take a chance to have anyone living in the database. 3) many of the gedcoms excluded information for living people so I was not sure if there was no birth date because they were living or if they did not know when they were born. With an index of approximately 30,000 Wells individuals, some sort of birth date was going to be necessary to differentiate all the 'John Wells' from each other .. a timeframe was essential. I did estimate birth year where I could using the 20 year rule (kind of). I hope this helps Bonita \\\|/// \\ ~ ~ // ( @ @ ) ----oOOo-(_)-oOOo---- Just Looking ... Lady Bonita Arizona, USA ----- Original Message ----- From: <OoliticIN@aol.com> To: <WELLS-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 11:46 PM Subject: [WELLS-L] Re: (only for people born before 1901) in the DNA Merge > Hi Bonita, > May I ask why the "only for people born before 1901" in the DNA merge? > That was a 104 years ago. > Tom Evans