Lifespans in charts

[Marlene Williamson 0]

Is there a way to change Lifespan options show baptism and burials where no birth and deaths data is entered? I don't want to add circa yyyy entries for births and deaths for all my individuals ...

 

Marlene

[Mike Talbot 0]

Is there a way to change Lifespan options show baptism and burials where no birth and deaths data is entered? I don't want to add circa yyyy entries for births and deaths for all my individuals ...

 

Marlene

 

May I suggest an alternative.

 

When you have a burial date and no death date, put before "b" that burial date in the death date tag.

 

When you lack a birth date and have a baptism date, but before "b" that baptism date in the birth date tag.

 

When no birth/baptism data is available I make a birth year up for every person without one. Nothing is more frustrating than looking for a "John Smith" in an index, then finding most of the several dozen of them have blank dates. Equally confusing is reading a report that contains no dates for several generations.

 

I invent unknown birth years by calculations from known dates of an ancestor, descendant, spouse or historical event. Then apply a little common sense as a check and round the calculated birth year to one ending with a 5 or 0. Invented birth years are denoted in the birth tag by following the year with a "?'. TMG will show the "?" for birth years in all reports that I use. The average child is born 30 years after its parents. Chidren are born within a few years of parents' marriage, etc.

 

When death/burial data is unavailable, I leave it blank.

 

Adopting these standards should give you what you want and will also make indexes and other reports more usable and clearer.

 

Best wishes,

[Marlene Williamson 0]

Thanks for your ideas Mike. I am currently evaluating whether to change my database of more than 20k individuals over to TMG and I have found in the past that other programs also do not deal with the absence of birth data very well. TMG is unique in its ability to show the baptism date in the pick list, where the birth date is absent and that is great. I currently create my charts manually but was impressed by the TMG charting facility which is very flexible. However more than half of my database individuals have no birth date and I am reluctant to add data just to make reports easier, my plan being to add it only when it adds knowledge or understanding to that individuals life eg. when it becomes obvious that they were baptised at an older age than is usual. I too have many individuals of the same name - at last count more than 160 named John Snell - and find that a suffix denoting origin, and the choice to use expanded pick list and bookmarks enables to find the correct one when adding data.

I appreciate your suggestions - thank you for taking time to reply.

Marlene

[Michael Hannah 0]

Hi Marlene,

 

TMG recognizes many different tags that can be in the "Birth" group. As you have noted, this includes the standard Baptism tag. You can even have more than one Birth tag. The tag in the Birth group that is marked by you as "Primary" will be the one that is used for beginning of lifespan. However, the standard Burial tag is in its own separate group and will not indicate the lifespan.

 

Many of us users have done two different actions to deal with this. First, if there is no documentation for either a Birth or Death, you can still add such a tag, but enter the date in a way that it is clear it is a "guess". For example, I will often add a Birth tag with a date that is just a "circa" year (e.g. "circa 1845") that is twenty years before their marriage or twenty years before the birth of their first identified child. I also use a custom sentence for that tag to make it clear that this is a "guess" and include in the memo what information the guess is based on. I even do this sometimes for death tags, such as "before 1910" when the father is not in that census and the mother is listed as widowed.

 

Second, for cases where I have a burial but no death, I have created a custom tag in the Death group (which I call "BurialAsDeath"). Then when I use that tag for the burial data, because it is in the Death group it will show as the end of lifespan.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,

[Mike Talbot 0]

Thanks for your ideas Mike. I am currently evaluating whether to change my database of more than 20k individuals over to TMG and I have found in the past that other programs also do not deal with the absence of birth data very well. TMG is unique in its ability to show the baptism date in the pick list, where the birth date is absent and that is great. I currently create my charts manually but was impressed by the TMG charting facility which is very flexible. However more than half of my database individuals have no birth date and I am reluctant to add data just to make reports easier, my plan being to add it only when it adds knowledge or understanding to that individuals life eg. when it becomes obvious that they were baptised at an older age than is usual. I too have many individuals of the same name - at last count more than 160 named John Snell - and find that a suffix denoting origin, and the choice to use expanded pick list and bookmarks enables to find the correct one when adding data.

I appreciate your suggestions - thank you for taking time to reply.

Marlene

 

Investigate John Cardinal's TMG utility program before making a final decision. It performs miracles, sometimes, that I've never imagined. The marriage of TMG and editable VCF charts was enough to switch me to TMG over a decade ago. All else was good, but secondary.

 

Hope you decide on using TMG. Looking forward to your clear and concise posts on TMG forums in the future.

 

Best wishes,

[Marlene Williamson 0]

I will indeed. I am enjoying TMG so far - its always the transition from the the control of knowing how to do things to learning a new method that is the problem! Perseverance and learning how I can change the system is the key. They say that women always want control!

Marlene

[Michael Hannah 0]

Marlene,

 

That is exactly why I like TMG so much. It is extremely customizable and configurable to be able to "do it my way".