Thanks for working on such a difficult project.
I've been fiddling with the Quality Score as I've been working through some Norwegian relatives of my wife's and working through parish registers. I can't imagine the work it is to try to get a reasonable balance between over flagging and under flagging in light of historical statistical information.
I had this flag pop up on a person: "The burial date is 21 days after the death date. Burial usually happened within 8 days of death" and it did get me, as intended, to double check the dates to make sure they were correct, which they were.
But just for fun, I took a lot at the entire section of death/burial records here: and found the following for this parish for 1856:
Recorded death date - Recorded burial date - Days between
March 24 - May 8 - 43
Apr 10 - May 24 - 44
May 9 - Jun 14 - 36
Jun 2 - Jun 14 - 12
jun 21 - Jul 12 - 21
Jun 19 - Aug 9 - 51
Jul 11 - Aug 9 - 29
Aug 17 - Sep 13 - 29
Aug 6 - Sep 13 - 38
Oct 31 - Nov 11 - 11
Sep 27 - Nov 11 - 45
None of the burials were 8 days or less after the death. (I have read an explanation as to why this is the case).
I hope users can get used to the idea that you are stuck using the most reasonable statics you can. Is there some way a notice can be posted that these flags are meant to be a help to double check things and are not meant to be an annoyance?
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I've seen old obituaries from winter deaths with a notice that the burial would occur in the spring, after the thaw.
Even in the 21st century, my father's ashes were held and buried after the death of my stepmother, 4 years later.
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Áine - for what it's worth, I always use a different, custom, event for the interment of ashes. Since I know of several (recent) instances where cremated remains were kept for (literally) years before burial, it seems a good practice to follow in order to avoid this sort of warning.
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Unfortunately, I don't have a date of interment of the ashes for my father or my stepmother, so I can't do that. I was commenting that there was at least a 4-year gap. I think it was closer to 6 years while my stepbrothers got around to it.
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Áine - ah - point taken for your specific case.
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Hi Gordon,
We have the ability to configure the delayed burial days by time period and location.
Do you know if these delayed burials are specific to the country of Norway? Or are they specific to a certain time and place where a disease outbreak may have occurred?
I also notice that the burial dates seem to come in pairs, I wonder why that might be.
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Hope you don't regret you asked!
Here is a summary of how I understand things for Norway in general regarding burial records. I've picked up bits and pieces through the years, don't have good sources for you, and probably have some incorrect information here. Also, this may vary based on area of the country.
Prior to 1816, the parish registers were just a blank book the priest wrote in. Because they dealt with church events and not vital events, they only included christenings and burials. They did not in general include birth and death dates. So the "burial too late" flag will never be an issue because there will never be two dates to compare. At best the death date will be entered in Family Tree as just a year or maybe a month and year.
The 1877 and later pre-printed parish registers have three columns in the deaths section: death date, burial date, and funeral date. Here is a random page from an 1878 register: where you can see that the burial date usually is within a week of the death date but the funeral date could the same day as the burial or be weeks to months later. So the quality flag for "burial too late" should function just fine as long as people enter the second date, the burial, in Family Tree and not the third date, the funeral.
However, from 1816 to 1876 the pre-printed parish registers supplied to the parishes had just two date columns in the section for deaths. There was a column for death date and for burial date. And even though the burial date has always been indexed as a burial date and even though everyone I've ever seen, including me, records it as a burial date, it isn't. Parish registers are a record of church events. This means that when only a burial date is recorded, it is the funeral date.
For a funeral to take place, two requirements had to be meet. The family had to be able to pay the priest's fee. Needing to save up enough to pay him could delay the funeral quite a while.
Secondly, the priest had to be present. Most of Norway was very rural and the large communities which consisted of a single parish (prestgjeld) were often divided into two to four sub-parishes (sogn). Each sub-parish would have a church and the priest would travel from his home to each church in turn. He might be at a specific church only once a month. On the day he was there, he would hold the funerals and bless the graves for everyone who had died since he was last there. That was the date recorded in the parish register and why you see "burial" dates in clusters.
So for 1816 to 1876, the "burial to late" flag is going to be problematic because even if the person was buried the day after he died, the only date in the parish register is going to be the date the priest was at that church, collected his fee, and held the funeral to consecrate the grave which could be weeks to months later.
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Very thorough answer. Thank you!
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