Questions on Sources for Birth Tag and handling stepchildren

[Brian Gross 0]

I have not found a very convenient way to handle some sources for the birth tag.

 

The birth tag contains date of birth and location (city, county, state, country).

 

Right now, the (US) Federal Census is my primary source for many birth tags. Unfortunately the census (except 1900) only lists age as of last birthday and state of birth. It doesn't list date of birth (except 1900). I can calculate a range of probable birth dates from the census information and I would like to have that contained in my citations, so I can quickly review whether my sources generally agree.

 

I've been trying to put the information on my citation memo. Is there a better (or simply a different) way to handle this?

 

(Incidentally, tombstones often pose the same problem. They often show date of death and age in years, months, days. The probable date of birth can be calculated from that information.)

 

Related to that, sources often only support part of a tag. For example, only state vs., city, county, state or only year vs. day, month, year.

 

I'm filling in the surety for citations for the parts of the tag (state only, for example) they support even though they may contain no information for other parts of the tag (city, county for example).

 

Is there another approach for that?

 

While I'm asking, here's an unrelated question.

 

When I enter a stepchild I get an entry for that child's birth date on the stepfather or stepmother's person view. That entry is before the second parent's were married. I can change the sort date so that the stepchild appears after the marriage, but the date listed is out of sequence. Both listings seem to have their advantages. (The same issue exists for listing adopted children, of course.)

 

Is there a better approach for this?

 

Thanks for your help!

 

Brian Gross

[Terry Reigel 0]

Brian,

 

In my view the Citation Detail is the best place to record the fact that a source does not show exactly what you entered in the Tag. So I might have this in the CD of citations for a birth tag:

 

Family Bible: "shows date"

Census: "shows age 12 and state"

Tombstone: "shows age 78 yrs 3 mo 21 days."

 

Likewise, for a parent/child relationship tag when I cite an 1850 census "shows them apparently living as parent and child."

 

When I have sources that give variations on names, in the citations for the Name tag I note what each one showed as the name.

 

The virtue of using the CD is it automatically prints in the footnotes. The CM doesn't unless you add it to the Source Templates.

 

I don't enter relationship tags for stepchildren, so I'll let others suggest solutions for that question.

[Brian Gross 0]

Terry,

 

Thank you for the information. That seems like a good way to approach this.

 

Brian

[Terry Reigel 0]

You're welcome, Brian.