Widow or Widower

Wayne Leake

In City Directories, field instructions for spouse given name indicate the name of a widow or widower are NOT to be input. I find this particularly interesting -- this person was a spouse of the subject individual, and I assume would be needed information for anyone researching a family, just as in the living spouse (at that time) would be. Why is this information specifically not included? Isn't it just as important?

barbaragailsmith1

Sometimes the custodians of the documents dictate to Family Search what items they want indexed. I suspect this is the case here because it isn't the norm for indexing in Family Search.

Adrian Bruce1

My personal belief is that the exclusion of the deceased party is to avoid giving the impression in the index and search results that the deceased is still alive.

For instance, if Mary is recorded in a 1950 directory as the widow of George, and George died in 1940, we don't really want George appearing in search results as if he was still alive in 1950 - which is what would happen if George was indexed in the 1950 edition.

That's just my belief and I can't confirm why FS decided to do it like that, but it seems a good bet to me.

As for losing information, remember please that the index is just a finding aid and the researcher should always check the image - when they do that, they will see the name of the deceased. (I am assuming that the image will be available - if it's not, then data loss becomes more problematic but it's still better than telling people that the deceased is still alive).