English Dates from 1837 on - How do you enter the 1/4 if we are not allowed to use them. Thank you, Jean

Question

How do others enter 1/4 dates from England 1837 on if we are not to use them?

Comments

Thank you Paula, That makes sense. I have now put in the date on my person with an exact source. Then I wondered why the public could not see my carefully crafted source - see I have read Elizabeth S Mills - till I clicked on the [1] and I was taken to it. Now, how clever is that. Thank you again Paula, and WikiTree

Answer 1

Hi Jean,

I assume you are meaning the quarter from the birth death or marriage index. I normally just put the year in the date fields but then mention the quarter in my biography and source. I have also seen some historians putting the last month of the quarter and the year and then ticking the before this date box so i think you just need to decide which of them ways you like best and stick with it. I would avoid putting the last day and month of the quarter though as I have seen newer historians get confused over this and start to use that date as a set in stone birth date.

Comments

Paula, that is a very good answer to a very good question. I have asked members the same question before and everytime, I got a different answer. I like your style best. IMHO date accuracy is not too important because I have seen on my tree and others that there were different days or even years on legal government documents.When I see this I want to pull out my remaining hair but thank you for the 1/4 date information.

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The year is probably good for  many registrations in the last three quarters of the year. Not so good for Jan-March as the child could have been born in the last quarter of the previous year.

(but that doesn't take into account the children that were  registered when the parents  got round to it and who,not wanting to get into trouble, changed the birth to fit... have too many illiterate ag labs in my family that did exactly that)