Incorrect titling

Question

This is a plea on behalf of UK contributors. 

I have tried to bring this up before to no avail. "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again"

If you look at Hext-74 you will see he was born (bef. 1547).

If you look at Hext-68 you will see he died bef. 1548)

These are both WRONG.

In the UK, Parish records give the baptismal date, the marriage date, and the burial date. Following best practice I record the Birth Date before the baptism, and the Death Date before the burial. Then in the Biography, explain the date.

I get the very strong feeling that Wikitree is not interested in this UK problem.

Certainly the IGI records the baptismal dates as Birth Dates, and the burial dates as Date of Death. These are clearly wrong.

Please look at remedying this in Wikitree. It should cater for us in the UK as much as you guys across the water.

Please, please, please do not give me alternative ways of recording. I have been through this before and what I do now was agreed as best practice.

Comments

Pleased you took this up Steve. The impact for me has been that I have not added very much to Wikitree yet because I cannot see much consistency in the approach taken to UK profiles and have not yet made my mind up how to tackle those I add. In addition to the points you made, I am also uncertain what to do when I have data from the Civil Registration index using quarter and Registration District. Many other systems allow alternatives to be added which enable filtering and matching on both the Registration District and the physical location of the event. As an example, my grandparents were married in Amble, but anyone not too familiar with English records and only using GRO indexes would assume they were married in Alnwick. I have not yet understood if there is a technique on Wikitree to make both sets of information matchable.

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This is a problem for many of us. The practise of recording baptisms and burials isn't/wasn't limited to England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

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Why is nothing done about it then?

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Back in 2015 Chris Whitten provided his perspective on this topic in the G2G item Did you notice the new changes to profile pages?  Scroll down to his comments in response to the last "answer" (where I expressed my dismay about titles associating the date qualifier with the year).

And are some of the other previous G2Gs related  this topic:

• https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/293272/using-a-baptism-date-as-a-birth-date
• https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/263955/misleading-profile-headings

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I agree. How difficult can it be to insert a block for baptismal date in the edit function? I have seen baptismal dates considerably removed from birth dates, often as long as 1 year.

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I understand  what George is saying.

I would appreciate fields for baptism and burial on wikitree. As they are not there I just put the year of the baptism or burial in the birth or death fields and record the date of the baptism or burial in the biography. Obviously the both or death date may be wrong but it is sometimes the best we can do. I have come across adults being baptised occasionally when other information has become available.

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Agreed with everything above, trust us to be complicated !)

Just thunking that a similar problem may lie with the distinction between Marriages and Banns, as per a current G2G question,

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/406047/why-did-they-get-married-twice

As an English person the visual record seems easier to obtain so it is easier for us to distinguish?

Answer 1

UK Wikitreers have for years been begging for separate fields for baptism and burial, to no avail.

I record baptism as 'birthdate' and burial as 'deathdate' to keep WT's search engine happy, and put an explanation in the bio, such as:
"birth date above is actually baptism date.  Birthdate is unlikely to be forthcoming, as there were no birth certificates at this time, and (usually) only the baptism date was recorded."

I do not use 'before' and 'after' as, to my mind, they muddy the waters because the eye instinctively looks first at the numbers of the date itself. So, for example, you have a person born 'before' 1548 who died 'after' 1549 - and what do you instantly suppose? that that person died aged 1, even though they married and had children...

Comments

Looking at George Hext (Hext-68) you have the radio button selected for 'about' for his birthdate, and 'before' for his death date (so presumably it was actually his burial date).  The 'before' date appears completely: 16 Apr 1648; for the 'about' date you only put the year on the edit page.

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Sorry Roz, I am referring to the top title of the profile.

"George Hext (abt. 1514 - bef. 1548)"

Further down it is correct.

"Died before 16 Apr 1548 in Georgeham, Devon, England

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Even sorrier, Ros, for the auto spell to Roz!!

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Ah, I see.

It does that to everybody, wherever they come from; just names the years.  It's not just WikiTree, either; a lot (if not most) software and websites do it too.

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As Ros notes, the bold highlighting of the birth and death dates in the profile data section does mitigate the adverse effect of the title that displays only the year.

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@Steve No problem with the 'Roz' instead of 'Ros' - I get autocorrected myself to 'Rod' when I'm trying to sign things off! *chuckles*

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Thanks, Rob.

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You have to say that for genealogical purposes, "before" means "on or before".  It's not often you can be certain that two events didn't happen the same day.

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RJ, you make a good point, but it's not universally true. I'd suggest that it's a sure thing that probate of a will didn't happen on the same day that the testator died, and that when a family baptised 6 children on the same day in 1702, they weren't sextuplets born that day. Smile.

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@Steve

Answer 2

Answering Lynda's comment about quarter dates and registration districts:

In the data field, I just put the year.  In the birth location field, I put something like "St Germans Registration District, Cornwall, England" which alerts me to the fact that this is a district, not a specific place.

Then I put the entire reference down in the bio, such as "St Germans 5c 45, September quarter 1864".  I have often wondered, though: should I put a link to the GRO as well, for those unused to English records?

Comments

When using UK BMD indexes as a source, I just put the year and the county in the "edit Profile" section and then in-line source the full citation including registration district and quarter in the biography section. If I then find multiple census or other sources that gives a town/village of birth, then I change the "edit profile" section to add the town, village -

In general if a birth/marriage/death was registered in the June, September or December quarter, I mark the year as "confident"..if March quarter, then I mark the year as "uncertain" as the birth/marriage/Death could have occurred in the preceding year.

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An example of 'the preceding year': My own birthdate is in November.  But my parents waited until the very last minute to register me in January of the next year.  Hence, in the BMD indexes, my birth is in the March quarter of the following year.