Recording burials and cremations

LegacyUser

terry blair said: I admit to not understanding why change does not seem possible in dealing with the recording of burials vs cremations and the difference between various types of marriages, but one thought has occurred to me and that is the necessity of changing the gedcom communication code (if that is the default communication protocol) to handle any changes. Somewhere there would have to be one organization that produces a master design for the code and without that, nothing will change.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: It isn't GEDCOM, it's Family Search's own API, so they are the one organisation. Conversely, they do have to organise any changes to the API especially if they are not compatible with the previous API. This may take time

Change is possible. They "canna change the laws of physics" but beyond that it simply takes time, money and agreement. And the desire.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: This last official release of the GEDCOM specification protocol was version 5.5 (in 1996) There have been some proposed changes and even a private specification, but nothing official. I think that while 5.5 is still with us and used by many sites/programs, if not all dealing with genealogy, I seriously doubt that there will ever be a new officially-accepted protocol specification that goes beyond 5.5. The GEDCOM specification was a product of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through it family history department which most of us know as FamilySearch.

Changing the FamilySearch API can put a strain on independent developers and the latest change caused a number of applications to no longer work correctly. What happened is that some developers did their thing with FS and then went on to other projects and/or work. When the recent changes were made to the API, many of the application owners made the necessary changes to work with the changes to the API, while others no longer had the time or interest to make their apps compatible. Some of those apps were very popular and widely used by many people (including myself from time to time).

LegacyUser

RexStrother said: I would definitely like to see Cremation be visible in this way - as it seems to "belong" in the Burial section.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: This subject comes up on a regular basis. The following is taken from the discussion at:

https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

"Burial" is simply the time and location where the body is "returned to the earth", regardless of what shape that body is in

"Cremation" is simply the conversion of the body to ashes. If those ashes are then "returned to the earth" by being placed in a tomb, grave, or distributed into some body of water, that would be a burial.

If the ashes from a cremation end up on someone's mantel, then technically, a burial has not occurred.

I don't believe that a cremation can be considered a "disposal of the body" as has been mentioned simply because the body has just changed form. As Tom mentioned, you still have the ashes which are just another form of the body. "Disposal of the body" would also have to include disposal of the ashes. Cremation only CREATES the ashes.

All bodies are eventually converted to ashes. It's just that when you do it through the normal "burial in a coffin" process, it takes a lot more time and space and occurs AFTER burial.

So Cremation is NOT really an alternative form of Burial, it's just another way of preparing the body for burial. Information on it does not belong in the Burial Vital.

I also wanted to point out that the Burial Vital itself is an EVENT. That is a specific time at a specific physical location with the name that applied to the location AT THAT TIME. If the name of the place has changed over time (e.g., ownership of the cemetery, county boundary shifts, etc.) then that information needs to be included in the standardized names database for places.

In the case of a cemetery that has been relocated, this is a whole NEW EVENT. This would have to be covered as a separate custom event called something like "Reburial" since it has a different date and a different physical location (along with the appropriate name for that physical location at the time of the reburial event).

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Correct on all points. But how do we education the user community on how these terms are defined?

Is there somewhere on the internet where we can enter a term using in genealogical (family history) research and have the meaning returned to the person asking for the definition?

LegacyUser

iLoveMyLife02 said: Keep in mind that "Burial" field is part of a genealogy program not to let you know where someone's body is so much as to let you know where you might find information on that person (DoB, death, other relatives). So, it doesn't matter so much where ashes are as much as where the tombstone or cenotaph is.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: With respect to my brother's cenotaph, that location (an abbey) is recorded in the burial field.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Respectfully, I still think we are looking beyond the mark here and complicating things. In my simple mind, the "Burial" field is simply where you record the "burial" EVENT. I.e., the DATE and LOCATION where the body (regardless of what form it is in) is "returned to the earth from which it came". If the body disappears from that place for any reason at all (such as in the case of a relocation of the cemetery), that does NOT negate ANY of the vital EVENT record that is in the Burial field. It is all still 100% correct.

For example, if I look at the value in the location part of a burial event, it should tell me where that burial occurred. If the location where the burial occurred is unknown, that field should be blank. If a cenotaph exist but its location is NOT THE SAME as the location of that person's burial, I feel that it should be entered as a Custom Fact named "Cenotaph" and includes the location of the cenotaph.

People all have their own ways of doing things but it just seems odd to me that if I look at the Burial event vital for someone and see a location recorded there, why would I supposed that that was NOT the location that the burial took place? Why record a location that has nothing to do with the person's burial, in that person's burial event location?

Think we should record Custom Facts, or Custom Events for these types of oddities. Call a spade a spade and people don't get confused as easily.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The problem is that Find a Grave records the placement of the cenotaph for both my brother and his wife. In the burial record, I included in the reason statement, this: "A memorial niche is established at this place. His ashes were scattered by his children." I do not know the location where they scattered the ashes, but can ask at a future date.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: "So Cremation is NOT really an alternative form of Burial, it's just another way of preparing the body for burial. Information on it does not belong in the Burial Vital"
Given that the Burial may act as a proxy for an absent Death Event, then if a Cremation is recorded elsewhere (so that it isn't a proxy for the death), then the potential exists for significant error in the proxy death value if there is no Death event per se, a Cremation that is not a vital event, and a Burial (of ashes) that is much later on, but acts as a proxy for the death.

This happens - 2 people of my acquaintance had their ashes buried years after their death.

Not allowing a Cremation to act as a proxy for Death, and depending on a much later burial of the ashes, sounds like folly to me.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: I wholly agree that "Reburial" is important - most burials in the larger Commonwealth War Graves Commission are reburials.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: "Keep in mind that "Burial" field is part of a genealogy program not to let you know where someone's body is so much as to let you know where you might find information on that person (DoB, death, other relatives). "

Hmm. I have never heard that view expressed before. In the unlikely event that there is a gravestone (to take the pre-WW2 UK as an example), certainly information might exist, but the whole point of a burial event (to me) is to record where someone was buried. (And as Jeff points out, not necessarily where they are buried now...)

LegacyUser

S. said: You could always say in the notes that this happened so people know that it happened also

LegacyUser

Ronnie Duarte said: I so agree with Cynthia Louise Van Dam and Rex Strother. ... I'll go hunt under 'Other' for the cremation and date option.