General Chat

Why do so many people not give dates/places of birth of their ancestors on this site. It makes it so difficult to cross reference. PLEASE TRY AND PUT THE INFO ON THANKS

Have to agree with you Marion - I wish people would also put a county, region or country next to place names too - just because you know where a place is, doesn't mean that we all do - have to admit that my British geography can be a bit hazy north of the M25 lol :))

I always try to add name husband/wife where they lived any childeren, mom&dad and any info that may help, you never know if you don't you could end up barking up the wrong tree if you get my meaning. Bev

It is frustrating to find a possible match for a relly with no year of birth/location, but it's equally frustrating when you have relatives yourself and you're not sure where they're from. For example I'm told my grandfather was from Aston in Shropshire, and having looked it up on recent maps I find there are about 7 different Astons (or varients of) in Shropshire and several others in bordering counties. I think I need his birth cert! I agree though that adding any location/year of birth is better than nothing, even if it's not entirely accurate.

I have posted on this before, and yes it may well be because we don't know. It can also be down to the peculiarities of individual family tree creating packages. For instance FTW will allow you to put information in as additional facts, perhaps where you know a baptism which does not indicate the date of birth. When you create a GEDCOM all this information is lost. The only way around it is to put a guesstimation of birth date which could be anything up to 10 years incorrect. I am doing this with my tree but with over 400 names it will take some time, each time you finish a batch you need to create a Gedcom, delete the old one on GC and upload the new. All this is not actually doing family history research! It may help ultimately other people but in terms of the information I've had from this site there isn't much reward.