What spelling to prioritize, government spelling or personal spelling?
I am researching one of my lines, which ends with James Cronin. This is the spelling of my name, however I saw that was rendered Cronian on his Gravestone, and it seems that his son Michael, which is how I am connected to James, also spelt his name Cronian on occasion. Also, his DOB is rendered as 1819 from a census estimate in 1850, however his gravestone reads he died at 55-56, making his DOB 1808-1809. My question is should I edit James' profile to reflect this? I don't know the rules or "etiquette" to editing. When and how often do you edit, and do these details of small surname differences matter much to the FamilySearch algorithm?
Answers
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For the name, you don't need to remove one to add the other: you can enter "James Cronian" as an alternate name. I see that someone has already done so with "Michael Cronian" on his son's profile, although the conclusion has not yet been tagged with its source(s) (except in a vague reason statement).
For the birthdate, the rule of thumb is to give higher weight to the record closer to the event, i.e., a record from 1850 is more likely to be correct about a birthdate than one from 1864, all else being equal. Of course, all else is seldom equal, and it's seldom possible to make absolute judgements of reliability: people were a lot sloppier in their reports to a census-taker than they were to the stonecarver — but the former was "straight from the horse's mouth", while the latter by definition was by thirdhand report. (People don't stick around to fill out their own death records.) So there really is no definitive answer, and it's up to you whether you change the conclusion in Vitals or not. (I would probably at least add an "about" to the birthdate, although most parts of the system will treat "about 1820" exactly the same as "1820".)
I mostly work alone on my little island of relatives, but there are a few branches (or more like tendrils) where I've joined up with the work of other researchers, and I haven't really noticed any particular etiquette to it. I do know that I have greatly enjoyed working with my like-minded distant cousin who always makes sure to attach and tag every source, while the branch that has been connected to a guy in Argentina without a single source to be found is an ongoing source of frustration. So I guess my advice is, do as you think is best, but make sure to document your decisions. (You'll be doing a courtesy to yourself as well as to other researchers, because a year or two from now, you will not remember your thought processes that led to a conclusion. Ask me how I know.)
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In addition to what @Julia Szent-Györgyi wrote, I would add…
Name: I try to keep the name at the top of the profile the "complete" name. I've been researching certain lines in 19th-century Mexico, and a lot of baptismal certificates contain two, three, or even more given names for the child, but usually only two given names or a given name and a surname for the parents and godparents. Once in a while a party or witness at a wedding or a particularly illustrious godparent is listed with a title, or more given names, or multiple surnames, but usually most parties are only "listed" with two name-components, when they "had" more.
So for many people no single record will contain all the components of their name. I generally include all the given names, and all the surnames that were ever actually recorded for the person as "Name", each component as spelled on the most recent primary record, and then have a "Birth Name" for the baptismal name (given names only), "Married Name" for what they used at their own wedding, possibly another "Birth Name" if there was a civil birth certificate with a different set of given names or an actually-specified surname, and possibly multiple "Alternate Names" for significant variations of their name across various sources.
Date: All else being equal I would take the gravestone over a census, but neither is a particularly trustworthy source. Better would be age at marriage, or at birth of a child, or a range based on known older/younger sibling and their birthdates. Better yet would be the ancestor's own statement "I was born on date, when my mother was in place because reason" on some document. Best would be an actual birth record or infant baptismal certificate.
Even those aren't always reliable. I've been working a lot with relatives in a certain town in Mexico, where most people were Catholic and FamilySearch has films of christenings as well as civil births from about 1870 to 1930. Many children were christened and also registered civilly, but often the birthdate doesn't match. Sometimes the "birthdate" on one record is actually the registration-date on the other record; a lot of times the christening only has "X days old", where perhaps "one day old" actually meant the same day, "two days old" meant the day before, etc.; but sometimes the date is explicitly specified in both documents, and different. I guess I prefer the earlier date, especially if the alleged civil birthdate is after the christening.
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