Family history is largely about stories, but genealogy is about facts, particularly the vital events of birth, death and partnerships.
You will not always have all the facts. For your earliest known ancestors, you probably do not even know the decade they were born in. For more recent ancestors, you are likely to have christening dates but no birth dates. For recent ancestors, you are likely to have the actual birth date itself.
The situation for other vital events is similar. You may not have any information on how old your earliest known ancestors became. For more recent ancestors, you may not know when they died, but only when they were buried. For recent ancestors, you are like to have an official date of death.
For the earliest couples in your family tree, you probably have no information where or when they married. For more recent ancestors, you are likely to have the date and place of their marriage announcements, but not the actual marriage date itself. For recent ancestors, you probably have an invitation that lists the date, time and place.
When you create a genealogy, you should enter the facts as you find them, and genealogy applications allow you to do so. You can enter your own birth date and your great-grandfather's christening date. You can enter your parent's wedding date, and the marriage announcements of their grandparents. You can enter death dates as well as burial dates. If you happen to know say both the birth date and the christening date, you can enter both.
Applications that support birth, marriage and death events without supporting christening, marriage announcement and burial events do not deserve to be classified as genealogy applications.
There are some applications that support only birth, marriage and death events. In particular, many of the so-called social genealogy sites suffer from such limitations. Applications that support birth, marriage and death events without supporting christening, marriage announcement and burial events do not deserve to be classified as genealogy applications.
You should not settle for such applications, but upgrade to a real genealogy application, which allows you to enter the facts as you find them. There are plenty of these around.
Sadly, the support for christening, marriage announcement and burial events
is rarely as good as the support for birth, marriage and death events. It often
seems as if the creators thought that such secondary events need no more
than second-rate support; the application allows you to enter the event, but
many screens, charts and reports do not take advantage of the data you entered.
For example, an ancestral chart will show birth and death events, but not
christening and burial events. That is generally not a great loss when you
happen to have all four facts for an individual, but it is a serious omission when the christening
and burial events are all you have; you are left with nothing but a name.
For our earliest documented ancestors, secondary vital events are often the only primary information we have about them.
It is not illogical to think of birth, and death as primary vital events and to think of christening and burial as secondary vital events, but that does not imply that these events deserve no more than second-rate treatment. For our earliest documented ancestors, secondary vital events are often the only primary information we have about them. That information should be supported and shown.
When an application does not provide the functionality it should provide, users tend to treat the existing functionality with a certain inventiveness. When an application does not support a secondary vital event, users will often decide to use the fields meant for the corresponding primary vital event. They will enter a christening as a birth, a marriage announcement as a marriage, and a burial as a death. The understandable reasoning behind these actions is that it is better to have to have the secondary information than no information at all. - besides, the dates are practically the same.
Such actions and reasoning are very understandable, but it is not right. Using fields meant for one thing to store something else creates a dirty database full of misinformation. Even worse, it creates a dirty database that is hard to clean, because it is not immediately obvious that the information is wrong; a consistency check will not find these errors. Early birth dates, from a time that people often wrote only the christening date down, may be suspicious, but that still does not prove that the date really belongs to a christening event.
If you are currently using a not-really genealogy application that does not
support secondary vital events at all, the only right thing to do is to drop it.
Tell the vendor to read this article if you like, but switch to something better
as fast as you can.
If you are stuck using such a defective product, add a date modifier such as Bef
(before) or Aft
(after)
to the date to communicate that the exact date itself actually belongs to a
secondary vital event; for
example, when the christening date is 31 Oct 1632, and all you have is a birth
date field, do not enter 31 Oct 1632
into it, but enter Bef 31 Oct
1632
into it instead. That is not a perfect solution, but it is much better than
simply entering the date of another event, and does enable you to recognise and
fix all these cases when you upgrade to a real genealogy application.
Lots of genealogy software supports secondary vital events, but treats these
as if they second-class events; screens, charts and reports display primary
vital events, but do not display the secondary vital events.
It is easy to make sure the application displays something anyway; just enter
whatever you'd like to be displayed in the fields for the primary vital event.
For example, if someone was christened on 31 Oct 1632, you'd already have 31
Oct 1632 in the date field for the christening event, and you'd simply add Bef
31 Oct 1632
in the birth event.
The problem with this approach is that it is wrong. There often were a few days between birth and christening, but not always. Many children were christened on the day they were born. For those children, the statement that they were born before the christening date is plain wrong.
Many genealogist who opt for the approach of adding something in the fields for
the primary vital events realise this, and opt to use the date modifier Abt
(about) instead of Bef
(before). However, using the date modifier Abt
with a full date (as in Abt 31 Oct 1632
) may be legal, but it sure feels odd,
so many opt to use a less exact date (as in Abt Oct 1632
), which loses
information. Some are even so bold as to use a less exact date, perhaps just a
year, without a date modifier.
The problem with all these approaches is that they lack genealogical sense.
A christening typically took place shortly after birth. A marriage typically took place shortly after the marriage announcements. A burial is typically held within days of deaths. All this is typical, but none of this is certain.
Christening can happen at any age, and christenings weeks or months after birth are not uncommon. Christening happened at the church the parents attended, which is not necessarily in the same place as the child was born. In border regions, it often is not even the same country; the period for which he have both birth and christening records, shows that many children born in Süderwick (Germany) were christened in Dinxperlo (Netherlands) and vice versa.
Marriage announcements were made to allow a period of objections; if
someone was revealed to be married already, the marriage would not proceed. It is
safe to assume there was a marriage when there is recorded offspring, but otherwise
it is no more than an assumption; a likely assumption, but an assumption still.
If the bride and groom were not from the same place, announcements would be made
in both places. That you found an announcement in one place does not imply that
they married there, they may have married in another place. If I told you that
the marriage of a certain couple was announced in Delft on 5 Apr 1653, you'd be
likely to assume that they married in Delft - and you'd be wrong.
Burials did not always occurs within days of death. For example, a harsh winter might prevent burial for months. For various reasons, people may be reburied many years after their initial burial. The burial location does not tell you where someone died either. Transporting bodies for burial in the family grave or their hometown church is an old practice.
When you know the date and place of a secondary event, you have a likely date range and a likely place for the associated primary event. Likely, not sure. You still do not know when or where the primary event occurred. For marriages, you may not even be sure that it occurred at all.
Sometimes the registration of a secondary vital event provides information on the primary vital event. For example, a christening record may note that the infant is three days old. When you have that information, take advantage of it. When you lack that information, accept that you lack it.
Do not make assumptions. Do not make events up. Stick to the facts. Do not enter anything for a primary vital event unless you actually have information for that primary vital event.
Do not make assumptions. Do not make events up. Stick to the facts. Do not enter anything for a
primary vital event unless you actually have information for that primary vital
event.
If a secondary vital event is all you have, accept that it is all you have.
Respect the primary information you have. Do not overshadow primary information about secondary vital events with
mere guesses for the primary vital event.
Do not mess up your database with thousands of doubtful assumptions just because your current genealogy software treats secondary vital events as second-class events. Instead, complain about the second-class treatment or switch to another product.
For recent ancestors we often known all primary vital event's; birth, marriage and death. For our earliest recorded ancestors, we often do have no information on primary events, but only information on secondary events; christening, marriage announcement and burial.
There are applications that support primary vital events, but do not support secondary vital events. Such applications do not deserved to be classified as genealogical applications. These applications thus invite users to either omit secondary vital event or enter them as if they are primary vital events. You should not use such applications at all, but switch to something better.
Some applications have half-hearted support for secondary vital events; their database support these facts, but many of its screens, charts and reports do not take advantage of these, only display the primary vital events. Thus, these applications treat secondary vital events as if they are second-rate events, and that is wrong. All primary sources deserve first-rate support.
Many users decide to address the problems caused by the second-rate treatment
by making up primary vital events. That practice does not make genealogical
sense. That a secondary vital event happened in one place does not imply that
the primary vital event took place in the same place.
Making up events is never right. Overshadowing primary information on secondary
vital events with mere guesses about primary vital events is disrespectful of
the facts you have. Respect your sources. Simply state the facts as you find
them.
Do not make assumptions. Do not make events up. Stick to the facts. Do not enter
anything for a primary vital event unless you actually have information for that
primary vital event.
That your genealogy software gives secondary vital events a second-rate treatment is no excuse to make up primary vital events, it is reason to complain and switch to better genealogy software.
Text has been edited to remove the suggestion that marriage records are vital records implicit in the original text. See “Vital Records” in Traditional Genealogy and Vital Events for discussion of this issue.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.