Algorithm Adjustment for Norway pre-1816
Prior to 1900, the only birth records for Norway were the parish registers since they had a state church and recording births, marriages, and deaths was one of its functions. The earlier one goes, the less likely there will be any other record that contains a full birth date. When you get earlier than 1816, the parish registers change to only having christening records and it is very rare that the priest ever bothered to include a birth date.
I am starting to work on a section of my wife's family where everyone was born before 1816. Therefore every single person has a Data Completeness flag of "The birth date is missing" or "The birth date is missing the month" since at most all we can reasonably include is the birth year.
Since the birth dates were never recorded, this flag will have to be dismissed from a lot of people. It would be convenient if the Data Quality routine just quit checking for a birth date if there is a christening date that is before 1816 and never applied that flag.
Comments
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@Gordon Collett thank you for the feedback. I will get this in the que to see what can be done :)
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@Gordon Collett Is there a natural start year for the proposed pre-1816 segment?
- 1700-1816?
- 1750-1816?
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To quote https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Norway_Church_Records which agrees with other sources I have read:
At a Congress of Deans held in April 1668, a resolution was adopted to introduce keeping parish records in Norway. However, it was not until 1688 that record keeping was required by law. Some pastors began keeping records much earlier. The earliest book is from Andebu parish in Vestfold, in 1623. Church records for the state church are available in most areas beginning about 1700…. A uniform system for keeping church records was introduced by royal ordinance in December 1812. The use of a standard form began during the winter of 1814. This form was replaced by a new one in 1820, and another in 1870. The form adopted in 1870 is basically the same one still in use today.
The law about record keeping passed in 1688 was sort of ignored in a lot of places. The uniform system of 1812 does not seem to have been adopted very quickly and not used much until the preprinted books which had a column for birth date were used instead of the blank registers used prior to that. In at least the western part of the country where I usually work, no one seems to have used the new books until 1816.
Here is a register for births in 1815:
Here is the new book used in 1816:
To get back to the point, the staring point might as well be 1623 since that is the date of the earliest christening records in existence.
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Thank you @Gordon Collett you are a rockstar!!
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