Can DOB and DOD without a day but with certain MMM/YYYY be marked as "certain/exact"?

Question

I have copies of baptism/burial records of some of my ancestors. Those sometimes only date the date of baptism and not the date of birth. That makes the correct DOB unsure, so I usually only put the month and the year in the DOB field. But this part of information is in most cases certain because the baptism took place in the middle of the month. So how am I supposed to mark the DOB/DODs here now when I only enter month and year?

Answer 1

I have pondered this as well. I would say with a christening/baptism, it shouldn't be exact because there is some room for doubt. Usually, it's within a month of birth (for infant-baptizing denominations), but I have seen substantial deviations. On the other hand, if the birth year is known without the day-month, from a tombstone for example, I'd say exact is appropriate. For burials, the proximity to the death date is more reliable, but I'd still hesitate to mark that certain.

Comments

Personally, I tend to use before with christenings and burials, not just because it's more technically correct, but when I see it with an exact date, I usually know that that's what it's based on.

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I agree, with baptisms the birth could have been any time before so the date should be uncertain or before - I've had some where the child was baptised the following year, and one family baptised a few children in a job lot on the same day (I think they'd been living in a different place for a while and baptised the kids in their home village church).

Answer 2

While MOST of the time the child was baptised either on the day of birth or within the first week, that did NOT always happen.

I had one ancestor who was born in Scotland in 1823 but not baptised until 1837 when she was 14 years old. To make things more confusing, when she grew up she used 1828 as her year of birth so it took me a very LONG time to find her parents and other details.

I use the YOB when there is a baptism date and add a note in the bio that it is assumed that they were born in the same year of the baptism.

And NO I never mark those dates as certain!!

Answer 3

Jelena,

if you have a baptism or burial record I think you should put in the exact date of the record.  It tells me, the reader that you a  record to back up that date and there is no estimation or guessing.

The question then is what status indicator should you use:  About/Before/Exact?  

Many people use before because they were obviously born before they were baptized - this is my least favorite.  Before is too big and too imprecise; it could mean days before, weeks before, months before, or years before.  

About is much closer to the truth, as in the vast majority of the time (it was required by law) an infant was baptized soon after birth (yes, I know you can all give me examples of someone being baptized years after birth, don't bother, that was the exception, not the rule).

I actually prefer exact in time periods (16th and 17th century) when there is no possible way to ever know the true birth date and the baptism date is a de facto birth date.  The date is precise from the record and can never be improved.  In the biography, I always note the date is in fact a baptism (or burial), and of course include the source.