Find a Grave Search Results Focus on Birth
I find it odd - maybe even wrong - that search results from Find a Grave seem to focus on birth dates often to the exclusion of any other information.
Why do the search results not show the death date? Often a memorial has no birth date or just a guess at a year of birth based on age at death. Yet death is not even displayed.
Answers
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I will take a look later (off to the shops this morning!) to see how "my" attached Find A Grave records appear. There is probably more than one explanation here, however.
It appears here that just two pieces of data have been indexed (carried across from the F.A.G. database?): the burial place and - where known - the birthdate. Whether by accident or design, why the death date has been omitted might have to remain a matter of speculation - unless Find A Grave can be contacted for an explanation. Perhaps that's all they allowed FamilySearch to publish, in these examples.
Whilst that seems doubtful if dates of death appear on other examples, there is inconsistency with other collections in the manner the records appear once in FamilySearch. As an example, with the 1851 England & Wales census (courtesy of Find My Past) there is the ability to search on specific location (town / village) for about half the English counties, but a search can only be made on the wider area of "County" for the rest of the counties. (I have asked why this inconsistency, but have never been provided with an answer.)
I remember there being a discussion (probably on GetSat) about F.A.G. records being wrongly indexed as Burials, when nearly all the dates related to the Death date (i.e., as found on the headstone as opposed to the records held - of burial date - in the offices of the cemeteries).
As I say, I will check on getting back home today on whether most of my "sources" appear with just the location of the burial and date of death - I believe they do. If so, this is merely an inconsistency (error?), as illustrated with my FMP census example.
On another point raised above, I wonder if you have found these records ever to (correctly) include burial dates, or whether (in your experience) any end-of-life date would always relate to the death itself?
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile - I do find the whole thing disturbing. Remembering previous concerns, I searched for a couple of examples from your list - James Whilden Hughes has, as you possibly already know, birth and death dates in FindAGrave. To state the probably obvious, the death date must have been omitted at either the production by FindAGrave of the interface file (perhaps to encourage people to go to FindAGrave itself) or when loading the interface file into FamilySearch (for all sorts of possible reasons ranging from compliance with FindAGrave's contractual terms to ....?)
Issachar Hughes is similar except that the dates of birth and death are just years in FindAGrave.
To take things a step further (and apologies if anyone doesn't want to take it further) - what exactly are the sources for the information for the above guys in FindAGrave? There's no photo of a gravestone - instead, there is a photo of what appears to be a stone column. The photos linked to South Orange Cemetery itself suggest that this is a column erected in the cemetery containing the names of... err, well, I think we have to guess what the names represent. There are no details other than the names, so it looks like the dates of both birth and death are from someone's research not from any physical relic. Even James Whilden Hughes' middle name looks like an insertion by a researcher.
If the FindAGrave data contains a legible image of a stone, a transcript of one, or an extract from a cemetery register, that's fine by me. Anything else, including extra data not present in the extract or on the stone, is no more than a hint and, frankly, I don't believe it should appear in FindAGrave - as I've said, "Which bit of Find A Grave do they not understand?"
Has FamilySearch taken some sort of sceptical approach and that's the reason for the omissions? No idea I'm afraid.
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@Adrian Bruce1 I can't speak specifically to the origin of the details from the South Orange cemetery on Findagrave, but I can to the ones from East Orange, which is the Cemetery of the Holy Sepulchre (CHC), East Orange, Essex, New Jersey. The records of CHC were microfilmed before the RC Church was ordered not to cooperate with the LDS request/offer to microfilm. My family was buried in that cemetery and others in the Archdiocese of Newark for over a century. I have viewed those microfilms back in the day and still consult the digitized images today, at my local Affiliate Library. I have images of several thousand of those records in my files. Since they are considered restricted, I will not attach a copy here.
I've added many of the records for my family, Hughes being one of my family surnames. There was a very active contributor who added 1000s more, using those microfilmed records.
The digitized records from the CHC, in general, contain both the date of death and the date of burial. Sometimes they include exact age and cause of death, among other details.
I used the example from "Hughes" because I know there are many Hughes references in Essex County, New Jersey in Findagrave. And, when I've added the memorial to Findagrave, and sufficient time has passed for the index to be updated on FamilySearch, I should be able to search for the memorial, with the information I KNOW is there, to connect it to the PID on the FSFT.
And I posed the question because the exact opposite was happening. Memorials I created several years ago would not appear in a search because the details are not in the FamilySearch version of the index. For a common surname, that can be problematic.
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I wonder if your examples appear any differently when checked on Find A Grave? (No time to check yet!)
Here is an example I have found. From the initial search (first image) one would think only the burial place was included in the record. However, opening up the record reveals there is a death date included - not just in the Find A Grave version, but in FamilySearch, too:
I am not showing the Find A Grave record in case this breaches copyright, but (for interest) it can be viewed at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/197700042/john-wrightson.
(Note the "Event Place - carried over from F.A.G. - does not conform to how the location was known in 1831. I believe this is common to all F.A.G. records, where only more recent versions of placenames are shown.)
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To be clear - the issue is NOT with Findagrave. The issue is with how FamilySearch displays search results focusing on what, to my thinking, is the wrong end of the stick.
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So, as I thought you might be doing, you are commenting on the results in the initial search. For example, FamilySearch does have the death detail, but one has to open up the "result" first:
I agree there should be a way of seeing this detail from the Results page, but have found similar examples of this type of practice in the past. It happens with some census records (as already referenced) and others types. So, equally, I find it annoying I cannot narrow my search for a "John Wrightson" who lived at Monkwearmouth, Durham at the 1851 census, but have to search on the whole county of Durham for results. I'm sure this has nothing to do with FMP restricting FS to what they can "highlight" on the Results pages, because I don't have the same problem when searching the 1851 census for other counties.
Yes, annoying, but by no means unique to records that come across from Find A Grave.
I reported my census examples years ago, but still no change. I hope you will have more success in highlighting this seemingly illogical issue.
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Since I posted an image of FamilySearch search results, I thought my point was clear.
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I got the impression you were implying the death detail was not available in FamilySearch - full stop. As I'd already accepted (from past experience) it to be common practice for FamilySearch to often only include certain data from the record on the Results page, I got the incorrect idea that you were saying one could only see the death detail by going to the Find a Grave website. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile - thanks for that background. Reassuring for me to know that there are genuine records in there, even though it doesn't seem to make it easy for me to convince myself. And interesting to hear of the issues surrounding RC information.
Yes - it is hugely annoying not to be able to find something that you know is there.
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Now I'm confused because I seem to have found something exactly the opposite. Am I missing something?
I did a search in the FS Find A Grave collection for Robert Bruce, any event = 1924 and Colma, San Mateo, California, United States. (My GG-GF's brother). In the Search Results, he's top of the list:
Notice please that in this instance, both Birth and Burial are populated (to the same level of detail as in FindAGrave - just to the year). If I click on the link and go to the FS record on https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV2D-Q2SV then this is what I see:
That's right - there are no dates at all on this FS record.
So how come the index record and data record didn't just get out of step but the index shows stuff that isn't on the data record that it's indexing? 😮 Confused I am... Anyone care to explain that?
NB - if I try Source Linker it does include Birth = 1841 and Burial = 1924, Colma, San Mateo, California, United States of America, as per the index but not as per the record it's indexing...
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I can't explain it, but it may come from that same spurious source that creates "on-the-fly" search results that don't match the record or the index/extract. I often see placenames in the search results that don't match the place in either the extract or the actual record.
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Again, we have the problem of nobody from FamilySearch being willing to participate in a thread like this - as only those responsible for putting these records online have the ability to explain how the process works and how, through such a process, we end up with such inconsistencies. It's not connected to Find A Grave, Find My Past, or whoever, saying you can't include this, that, or the other in the search results - that has been proved by the complete inconsistency in how they records come up when viewed from "Results". Then there is the issue (illustrated by Adrian, above) that there can actually be less detail in the Record than is visible from the Results page!
It is really sad when we come across issues for which we can be reasonably certain we will never get a positive response. Sadly, I don't think we would have received any better in the way of an explanation in using the old email / case number system. (I got "copy/paste" responses to most of my queries.) Surely "Community" was supposed to mean an enhanced way of getting an answer to issues like this?
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile said
"I often see placenames in the search results that don't match the place in either the extract or the actual record"
I have a distinct feeling that the issues of mismatching placenames came up ages ago in GetSatisfaction and one of the FamilySearch techies (speaking personally I think) explained how that happened. ("Explained", not "excused"). It may, or may not, have had something to do with automatic standardisation of placenames - or that might just be a recurrent nightmare.
Doing something on the fly sounds eminently plausible - but I'm still baffled how my example creates something out of nothing. Well, it can't possibly, of course, but there must be several possible explanations for that case.
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Yes, I'm quite sure the "on-the-fly" wrong placenames come from that standardization bot that has created so many issues.
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For example - from the New York City Municipal Deaths record set -
I'm not quite sure what triggers Hubei, China in those two.
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It appears to be the "E" in the "Address". The clue is that it's not the Birth or Death Place - the only sort-of-residence is the Address. When I entered "105 E" into the FS Standard Places, I got 3 places in China, the first of which was Hubei.
Hubei has an Alternate Name of È which is described as being a Variant Name in zh-Latn-pinyin (whatever that means exactly)
So there is a sort of logic behind it, even if little sense!
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@N Tychonievich, can you help with the standardized place name problem? The search https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&q.anyDate.from=1864&q.givenName=Catharine&q.surname=Burns&c.collectionId=on&f.collectionId=2240477&c.residencePlace1=on&f.residencePlace0=1&c.residencePlace2=on&f.residencePlace1=1%2CChina&f.residencePlace2=1%2CChina%2CHubei lists six records that have a residence in China.
@Áine Ní Donnghaile I will report the find a grave issue.
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Thank you Maile.
For the record, the misplaced residences in the New York City Municipal Deaths and other NYC record sets are widespread. See this post: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/146051/error-placename-standardization#latest and https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/129768/error-report-auto-standardization#latest
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@Maile L When I search the New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949 record collection, I don't see residence at all in the search results. The record details pages show an address and it seems to be fine. So, I guess (hope), that the issue with a China residence in search results has been resolved.
@Áine Ní Donnghaile I agree that the search results from the Find a Grave collection should focus on death dates. I see that it gives a burial year for some of them, but not others. I'll send that one up to the folks who work on the search algorithms. Perhaps we'll see a change in the future.
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@N Tychonievich In the NYC record sets, the issue seems to be prevalent in the "on-the-fly" results - a column of search results displays false locations. If you look at the 2 threads I mentioned in my comment from earlier this morning, you'll see plenty of detail.
And one of the examples I used in that earlier thread, searched for again just now, still shows that very strange location: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FD1B-1ZP
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I recently found a case where none of the family's Find a Grave listings had any birth info. These listings were all difficult to locate in FS.
In particular, they were unfindable until I deleted the birth info from the search parameters. This potentially seems related to the issue raised in the OP.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile Thank you for clarifying the NYC place issues. I'll get it moved on.
A suggestion to all: it is a lot easier for those of us who are trying to watch for issues if you start a new discussion thread when you are reporting a new issue that you found. It's easy to get overlooked when you tag your newly discovered problem on to a thread that started off discussing a different situation. For instance, this thread started off focused on Fnd a Grave, then residences in a New York City collection, then birth places in the same NYC collection and then back to Find a Grave. Keeping a thread to one specific topic makes our jobs a bit easier. Thanks!
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@N Tychonievich as you can see by my links above to the previous threads, I had already reported the NYC issues more than once. I was not reporting the NYC issues in this thread that I started. I only reported the Find a Grave issue. I used the NYC issues as an example of the on-the-fly problem.
Thank you for escalating the Find a Grave problem.
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