Montana Obituaries
It has very good instructions in the attached pdf document, and we are finally given the capability to index all relatives mentioned in the document!
One nit-pick about the instructions: we are told not to assume any last names where only a first name is given. But it is a fairly safe assumption that indivduals listed as children, brothers, sisters, and parents had the same last name as the deceased at some point in their lives.
This is a **very** important consideration for searching the index later. "John [no last name]" will never be found, but "John Dinglehopper" turn up on someone's search and may lead to discovering additional family members. At the very least, the deceased's last name should be considered a "probable last name" for the records with no last name, so that they have a chance of turning up on someone's search. Otherwise, there's really no point in trying to put these people in the index at all.
Comments
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Susan McReynolds said: I agree with the person above. There is a very good assumption that the family did not list the last names because the local people reading the obit would know who the persons are. However, someone looking for a family link would not have any idea who "Charlie" was.
When working on Obituaries, how should stepchildren, stepparents, step grandparents, step brothers and step sisters be handled? They are not really relatives of the deceased. Should they be relatives or non-relatives?0 -
Christopher Chambers said: I agree!!!0
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Susan McReynolds said: Since the first post was 8 months ago, I don't think anyone is listening.0
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Actually tonite Apr 30, 2021 is the first time I've seen Montana Obituaries project listed as available to index so my comment is twofold: one is that we all need to check community more often - its new in its formatting and now easier to read and participate.
Second pertaining to obituaries -- there also needs to be a listing of than relative for half-brothers and half-sisters.
On family relationships I would say be careful in comments - there are more divorces and living-together arrangements than there are traditional marriages - lots of us are trying to heal burned bridges through the ages --- and you need to take time to read the obituary completely - you may not think of your "steps" as real relatives but many people do -- and these children and grandchildren play an extremely important role in healing families
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Here is some recent instruction on these:
If the death date is not in the obituary leave it blank, but if the date that the obituary was published is included, then use that for the death year and leave the month and day blank.
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Until they change the instructions, I do not think we can index the publication date. Currently it says if the death date is not recorded to mark the fields blank. (May 2, 2021 3:14 am GMT).
Step relationships are simply indexed as mother, father, daughter, son, brother, sister, etc. When indexing obituaries we leave off the words step or half.
Just as we did in 2014, we still do not assume the surnames from others mentioned in the document.
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May 5th: An instruction has been added to the Project Instructions and the Field Helps:
- If a death date was not indicated, you may index the publication date as the death date.
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