Genealogy Chat

I've just checked my "new names" summary. It said there were 30 new names since the last 2 days. Excitedly I clicked on it only to find that NOT ONE of them had a place or date of birth. What's the point??? Anne

It maybe the person loaded their tree from a GED COM file, and they didn't know the date or place of birth. GC makes you enter a year and place of birth - so I usually make a guess if I don't know. Sometimes those parish records read - William son of John - with no indication of where John was from. I've learnt not to assume that they came from the same village - as I have ancestors who seemed to zip up and down the country at a drop of a hat. So for a place of birth does one enter the COUNTY (?), UNKNOWN, ENGLAND, SCOTLAND or IRELAND. Paul

It's amost certainly a gedcom file that has been uploaded and either the info wasn't in the original file ir GC doesn't recognise the format. At least once a month my surname file gets 350 "new" entries on the same day but the total stays the same.

I always add a County if possible, or at least a Country if not in England, and give an approximate date of birth. Downloading a complete Gedcom file containing unverified data is so unhelpful. There may be lots of people out there related to me, but I regard it as a total waste of time to e-mail people about a name, only to find it's a hundred years or a hundred miles away from my person of the same name. Stan

Is it possible to give an APPROXIMATE date of birth on GC? I've tried to write circa or approx, but it won't let me. I don't like giving a single date and place of birth if I'm not sure (or in some cases I haven't a clue where the place of birth was) because others have a tendency to take what one has written as 'gospel' and before you know what has happened, your approximation has been taken as a 'fact'. I've had that happen before when I emailed somebody for information (not on this list), only to find that the original source of the 'information' was my approximation some months before. Sue

Sue If you don't know the exact year of birth there is a box just below it that you tick to say it is approximate. At least I think there is... I'll just go and check Rachel By the way I did check and there is a box you can tick!

Thanks :-)

I posted this yesterday on it's own thread. The problem occurs when a gedcom is loaded. GC's format at the moment does not allow for the baptism dates and places to be uploaded. Birth and baptism dates are not the same. Sometimes they are wildly different. I won't change my tree to read something it doesn't say. Besides which the numbers involved are too great. Mine and my husbands involve over 3000 names in all. Some people have more than that. The problem is the system that doesn't work the same as a normal genealogy program. I emailed GC and got the following reply. Margaret I have spoken with our development team and whilst it is correct that the introduction of the incorporation of baptism details into Gedcon files uploaded to GenesConnected was ready to be tested a few months ago, the implemntation of this new facility has now been delayed. I appreciate the frustration that this is causing you but as you will be aware, we are a very small team and there are just so many other enhancements to the site and the loading of family trees that have had to take priority. I'm afraid that, at this stage, I can not give you a firm date of when we will be introducing this enhancement but rest assured that it will not be forgotten and will be implemented as and when time allows. Regards NickyD

I agree that this can be frustrating but I think we need to accept the limitations of the site. This team has given us so much pleasure with both GC and FR that we tend to forget that they are not necessarily professionals. It is always so easy to ctiticise. OK they charge us to become full members but look what we get for our money, a lot of help, friendship, entertainment. Ancestry wouldn't be half as much fun I am sure. and hopefully they will be able to solve the birth/baptism problem eventually. Ann Glos

Yes, I must admit this would have to be near the top of my "Get Ticked Off" list! I've spent AGES typing out info for replies only to have the person reply that the rellies is in the USA or somewhere! The upside is at least they had the decency to reply! (But let's leave THAT topic well alone! lol) I now do not even bother, like alot of us, to reply if there is no counrty! I might not know exactly where some of mine were born but I at least put England in the palce of birth! Sonja

Thanks to all of you for adding voices of reason! I was pretty fed up when I sent the original message. I see now that there may be good reasons for the non appearance of dates and places. However I never bother to reply to them, considering it a waste off effort! Anne PS I have had several successes also!!!

Anne I do see your point about a waste of effort sending for details for people with no place or date of birth, on the other hand you may find that the person named is the father of the bride mentioned on a marriage certificate or in a marriage index. Or indeef mother named on a birth certificate.If people can find no marriage details of the father or mother are you saying you would prefer nothing to be put into family trees at all. Whatever you think of missing details, contributers would still have details of descendants. As i am sure you will find with your own tree missing details is unavoidable if they cannot be found. George