Birth Order and Sorting Children

[elevator 0]

Good afternoon,

I have quit a few people in my database for whom I have no source for their year or date of birth (or even age), but do have good sources about the ORDER of birth (probate records, military enrollment records, population enumerations, etc). Now, I use the Birth Order flag to set the birth order, but in the Sibling and Children windows these are not displayed sorted by birth ordered, but rather appears in the order input. It would make sense to me to have these people display based on the order set in the birth order flag.

 

Also, in the detail screen, children without a birth date gets thrown together at the bottom (or the top, based on the configuration). I have noticed that there is no sort date for the son-bio, daughter-bio, etc. tags. Is there a reason for that? I would love to be able to sort these children into the tag list using sort dates.

 

Thanks,

Ken.

[MMj 0]

Good afternoon,

I have quit a few people in my database for whom I have no source for their year or date of birth (or even age), but do have good sources about the ORDER of birth (probate records, military enrollment records, population enumerations, etc). Now, I use the Birth Order flag to set the birth order, but in the Sibling and Children windows these are not displayed sorted by birth ordered, but rather appears in the order input. It would make sense to me to have these people display based on the order set in the birth order flag.

 

Also, in the detail screen, children without a birth date gets thrown together at the bottom (or the top, based on the configuration). I have noticed that there is no sort date for the son-bio, daughter-bio, etc. tags. Is there a reason for that? I would love to be able to sort these children into the tag list using sort dates.

 

Thanks,

Ken.

 

Hi Ken

 

The way I handle that is to give every one of my people a birth tag, since I know they were born, whether I know the DOB or not. Then I put an approximate year in the sort date field for the birth tag that will place each child in the order that I would like them to appear.

 

Mike Daugherty

Frederick, Maryland

[elevator 0]

Thanks for the quick reply Mike. That's certainly a good idea. I have generally been hesitant to add a birth tag if there is nothing to go in it, but if that solves the sorting issues I guess that's the way to go.

 

Thanks,

Ken.

 

Hi Ken

 

The way I handle that is to give every one of my people a birth tag, since I know they were born, whether I know the DOB or not. Then I put an approximate year in the sort date field for the birth tag that will place each child in the order that I would like them to appear.

 

Mike Daugherty

Frederick, Maryland

[MMj 0]

Thanks for the quick reply Mike. That's certainly a good idea. I have generally been hesitant to add a birth tag if there is nothing to go in it, but if that solves the sorting issues I guess that's the way to go.

 

Thanks,

Ken.

 

You are welcome, Ken. I adopted that approach about a year or so ago when I was having the exact same problem that you are having right now. So I now include a birth tag for each new person as I add them, and I find that this approach solves a multitude of little problems. Plus, it gives me at least 1 tag for each person.

 

Mike

[Guest ProudFossil]

Thanks for the quick reply Mike. That's certainly a good idea. I have generally been hesitant to add a birth tag if there is nothing to go in it, but if that solves the sorting issues I guess that's the way to go.

 

Thanks,

Ken.

 

I also follow the same tactic as Mike (no relation). I do add one further item though. I place the value "(date unknown)", without the quotation marks but with the parantheses, in the date field. This then serves as a visual reminder that I have not forgotten to enter the date but rather do not know it.

 

also Mike

[GenerationGoneBy 0]

I just put "--sort date based on parent's marriage" or "--sort date based on marriage" or what ever in the memo field.

[Mike Talbot 0]

Good afternoon,

I have quit a few people in my database for whom I have no source for their year or date of birth (or even age), but do have good sources about the ORDER of birth (probate records, military enrollment records, population enumerations, etc). Now, I use the Birth Order flag to set the birth order, but in the Sibling and Children windows these are not displayed sorted by birth ordered, but rather appears in the order input. It would make sense to me to have these people display based on the order set in the birth order flag.

 

Also, in the detail screen, children without a birth date gets thrown together at the bottom (or the top, based on the configuration). I have noticed that there is no sort date for the son-bio, daughter-bio, etc. tags. Is there a reason for that? I would love to be able to sort these children into the tag list using sort dates.

 

Thanks,

Ken.

 

Unknown birth years happen frequently!

 

Having a birth tag for each person is very handy, especially in large databases. If the date of birth is unknown, "make up/guess" a birth year. It is important to be able to distinguish "made up dates" from actual data, relative and approximate dates (b:before, c:circa, a:after). I have used the following method for over 20 years, about 10 years with TMG with very pleasing results.

 

The only way to uniquely, highly visibly indicate made up/manufactured dates in TMG while maintaining the sort order is by using the "?" as a suffix to made up birth years. The "xxxx ?" will be a legal date in TMG and highly visible on your editing, display, index screens and on reports and VCF boxes.

 

Some rules of thumb for making up birth years:

The average child is born when parents are about 30 +-2 years. So just find the nearest person with a known birth year and add or subtract 30 years per generation to estimate (make up) that unknown birth year (I usually round down the estimate to the nearest five years for dads and round up for moms). Another rule of thumb, is when parents have multiple children, they are most often spaced about 2 years apart. NOTE: I never make up/guess a death or marriage year.

 

For example,

if the parents' calculated birth year is 1580 and they have 10 kids of known birth order, the middle/average 5th child would be estimated to be born in 1610 (30 years younger than parents), the first child in 1600 and the last in 1620, each estimate spaced 2 years apart.

 

When you find birth years that were previously unknown, you can tweek your earlier estimates.

 

Many purists will not like estimated birth years, I have no quarrel with them. If you don't like, don't use.

 

Keeping a birth tag for every person solves many problems. If you only use the sort date, you lose all visibility. Visible birth years do resolve the sort order for multiple children. It also acts as a BullS**t filter.

 

In many highly respected genealogy references, I have seen children compute to be older than their grandma. An error that might not be caught without "every person" birth years. It becomes up to you to decide if the reference gave erroneous parents or grandma's date data was wrong. Having a birth year for everyone makes anachronistic birth year anomalies within and across generations become visible, so that you can reject bad referenced data and do further research. If you can't estimate a resonable birth year for each member of a family, chances are it is not a family.

 

When adding people with unknown birth years to your database, you should always do these birth year calculations to assure that the new data is reasonable. Why not preserve the results in TMG birth tags to save future work?

 

Best wishes,

Mike Talbot

Edited August 19, 2007 by Mike Talbot

[Mike Talbot 0]

addendum: Estimating those missing birth years

 

I have just noticed that somewhere over the years, TMG began sorting "?" suffix dates in one group and all other dates in another group in some features. I have just noticed this on VCF Descendant Charts, but have not identified other features where this sorting anomally occurs. The work-around, if desired, is to remove the "?" suffix from the sort date field but leave it in the main date field. Sorry about that.

 

Best wishes,

Mike Talbot

 

PS: Use known dates from in-laws to tweek your estimated birth years (ie: spouses of siblings, etc.). Remember you are estimating/guessing a reasonable birth year not making a scientiific calculation.

[elevator 0]

Thank you for your great tips. I am generally one of those who do not like adding tags that I cannot specifically cite with a source, but I consider unknown birth tags to be a little different. (The other) Mike made a great point in that for someone to have existed they MUST have been born, so making a birth tag empty or with estimated dates should be ok when including/citing oneself as the "creator" and source of such data.

 

It seems like adding a birth tag and including an estimated birth year as sort date may be the way to go for me.

 

Thank you all for your great help!

 

Ken.

 

addendum: Estimating those missing birth years

 

I have just noticed that somewhere over the years, TMG began sorting "?" suffix dates in one group and all other dates in another group in some features. I have just noticed this on VCF Descendant Charts, but have not identified other features where this sorting anomally occurs. The work-around, if desired, is to remove the "?" suffix from the sort date field but leave it in the main date field. Sorry about that.

 

Best wishes,

Mike Talbot

 

PS: Use known dates from in-laws to tweek your estimated birth years (ie: spouses of siblings, etc.). Remember you are estimating/guessing a reasonable birth year not making a scientiific calculation.

[Guest ProudFossil]

I agree with Mike Talbot in that there should be some attempt to estimate/guess/hope/extrapolate some type of birth date. I have found dozens of instances in other database files where as he says the child is born before the grandparent or 27 years after the death of the mother or etc. etc.

 

The system I use to identify my estimate/guess/hope/extrapolation is the following sentence structure:

 

[:CR:]As an approximation of when [P] was born, [D] is an estimate or guess based on the [M1]<. It is reported [P] was born [L]><. [M2]>

 

I place my reasoning in M1. Examples are "birth of his sister Ruth plus 2 years"; "year of the marriage of his parents plus 2 years"; "year of birth of her husband George plus 3 years". There are many other possibilities. The sentence also allows the addition of the birth place if it is known. M2 may contain additional reasoning or cautionary comments.

 

To identify the estimated date used in the sentence I have adopted the following format for the estimated birth year "(year ?? nnnn)" without the quotation marks but including the parentheses. wynn is the full year, eg., 1918, 1734, etc. This gives an entry in the date field of (year ?? 1918), (year ?? 1734), etc. Since these dates are irregular dates I use an appropriate sorting date to place the entry in the proper place/order in the event list. A nice feature of this format is that in the tag entry display the year in this format generally will fall in the same 'column' as the year in known dates.

 

I do have a similar sentence for marriage dates. I do not estimate death dates. The closest I will get there is a comment that a spouse possibly died before the remarriage of the surviving spouse but I do not use a death tag entry for this.

 

Mike Dietz

[Mike Talbot 0]

I agree with Mike Talbot in that there should be some attempt to estimate/guess/hope/extrapolate some type of birth date. I have found dozens of instances in other database files where as he says the child is born before the grandparent or 27 years after the death of the mother or etc. etc.

 

The system I use to identify my estimate/guess/hope/extrapolation is the following sentence structure:

 

[:CR:]As an approximation of when [P] was born, [D] is an estimate or guess based on the [M1]<. It is reported [P] was born [L]><. [M2]>

 

I place my reasoning in M1. Examples are "birth of his sister Ruth plus 2 years"; "year of the marriage of his parents plus 2 years"; "year of birth of her husband George plus 3 years". There are many other possibilities. The sentence also allows the addition of the birth place if it is known. M2 may contain additional reasoning or cautionary comments.

 

To identify the estimated date used in the sentence I have adopted the following format for the estimated birth year "(year ?? nnnn)" without the quotation marks but including the parentheses. wynn is the full year, eg., 1918, 1734, etc. This gives an entry in the date field of (year ?? 1918), (year ?? 1734), etc. Since these dates are irregular dates I use an appropriate sorting date to place the entry in the proper place/order in the event list. A nice feature of this format is that in the tag entry display the year in this format generally will fall in the same 'column' as the year in known dates.

 

I do have a similar sentence for marriage dates. I do not estimate death dates. The closest I will get there is a comment that a spouse possibly died before the remarriage of the surviving spouse but I do not use a death tag entry for this.

 

Mike Dietz

There are no wrong methods to do a fun hobby like genealogy. Do it the way that brings you the most joy and minimizes your agrivation. TMG is flexible enough that each user can please (or almost please) himself.

 

If you were to use the ? as a simple, one character, estimation suffix in the birth date field, per your example 1918 ? or 1734 ?, TMG treats either of these as a regular date. All TMG calculations, display and editing features will then function normally and without any annoying warning messages regarding your guesses.

 

I never guess at marriage or death dates, though I do use the before, after and circa date prefixes whenever the phrasing of a reference warrants them. I do enter a marriage tag for every marriage. But, only fill in the invisible sort date to reasonably order tags in the Person Window whenever the marriage date is unknown and leave the visible date field blank.

 

In each applicable TMG report and VCF chart I print the following sentence, one time in a highly visible location:

 

Any birth year followed by a ? is my guess of an unknown year of birth and is for reseach purposes, only.

 

Best wishes,

Mike Talbot