Alternative date/place fields
This particular forum may not be the correct place for this question, and it has probably been posed many times in the past. It is not infrequent that sources have different dates for the same person. For example, many times a person's birth certificate, marriage record, death certificate, and/or gravestone have different dates. Often, the month/day are the same, but the year is one year different. Or, the day is off by one day. Etc. And it is not 100% clear what the correct day is.
I think other software/platforms have the ability to enter alternative dates/places. If there is more than one marriage date, that can be entered in FamilySearch, but I presume that is only really intended to accommodate multiple marriages to the same person--not alternatives for a single marriage.
Currently, I put the dates/places that seem to be the most likely in the actual field, and then under "Reason" I cite the source(s) of that information. But then I sometimes add alternative date(s)/place(s) and their source(s) under "Reason." However, only the main date/place would get included in FamilySearch hints/similar records searches, and when doing external searches (e.g., Ancestry).
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This idea is intriguing. I wonder how it would affect already conflated persons.
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I wouldn't want the ability to enter alternative dates/places to increase the mixing of multiple people under a single ID (if that is what you are referencing). However, I don't think that would be the case. In fact, it might help identify the conflated cases and effectively flag them for further investigation. If users want to add a source with an alternative date/place, or merge IDs that contain conflicting dates/places, forcing them to add an alternative date/place may be useful. I realize this would be a huge change, though.
I have worked on thousands of IDs and attached tens of thousands of sources in FamilySearch. One example I run into repeatedly is the year difference in birthdates. There might be a birth record, a military draft registration card, a marriage record, a delayed birth record, a death certificate, and/or a Social Security death record, etc. that all clearly belong to the same individual. And the day and month may be identical (or one day off), but the year is different--usually by a single year. I tend to use the dates that show up most frequently--but with a bias toward the official records that were presumably recorded closer to the time of the event (e.g., the order of the records I listed above for birthdate). I also look at the actual images, if they are available.
The differences may be due to an error at the time the record was created or when it was digitally or manually transcribed into the sources we see--or some other issue, like a family member not remembering the accurate date when the record was created? I have no formal training in genealogy and have just made this up as I go along, so I don't know the best practice for FamilySearch. However, there just seem to be some cases where there is not a consensus, and where there is a possibility of the alternative date that I don't want to ignore.
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Your idea is similar to a couple of ideas already listed in the Suggest an Idea category:
Feel free to comment on or upvote either or both.
Now, the Tree already has a similar feature: you can add Custom Events, each with a date and/or place. For example, you could create a custom event of "Alternate Birth Date", or "Alternate Marriage Date", or "Alternate Death Date". I don't believe there's any way to search for people by alternative dates yet, however.
I'll also add that I've seen cases with discrepant dates. Some are really conflicting evidence supporting different dates for the same event; for example:
- The ancestor or thier family might have lied about their age to be old enough to work, or old enough to attend school, or old enough to marry; or to make the age-difference with their spouse seem less; or to cover up an extramarital conception or birth
- The witnesses could have made an arithmetic error or simple mistake; especially if they were illiterate
- The scribe could have simply miscopied something
But there are other cases where and estimated or wrongly-labeld date has made it into the Tree, and the solution is just to put the core dates in their proper slots, and the non-core dates in their other proper slots or as alternate facts. For example:
- A christening date was listed as a birthdate, but the christening record says that the child was X days old at christening
- Some date from wedding-related documentation other than the date of the wedding itself (such as the first or last banns, or the date of requesting the marriage license, or the date when the wedding certificate was filed) was listed as the marriage date
And for the case where a couple was married on different days (say, separate religious and civil ceremonies), a couple can have multiple Marriage Dates in the Tree (although currently only the earliest is listed).
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