Tuesday’s Tip – Using Estimated dates

madhattergenealogy@gmail.com

08 Sep 2015

Tuesday's Tips provide brief how-to's to help you learn to use the Legacy Family Tree software with new tricks and techniques.

Better Results with Estimated Dates

Don't leave date fields blank! You will get better searching and sorting results if you have estimated dates for the date fields where the exact date is not known.

For example, there is a married couple that has 5 known children but you don't know when the parents were married or when they were born. Taking into consideration the time period and the local customs, you can put in either an Est. date or an Abt. date for their birth dates and their marriage date based on the date of birth of their oldest child (I prefer Est).

This isn't an exact science, of course, but a more complete timeline will also help you when you are ruling people in and out when trying to determine if a certain person is YOUR person. You can do the same thing with death dates.

Here's another simple example. There is a man that appears on the 1850 census. In 1860 his wife appears but he doesn't. Of course a divorce is possible but it is more likely he had died between the two census dates. You could put a death date of "between 1850 and 1860."

This will also help you if you use the Research Guidance. For estimated dates I don't add a source but I might add a note explaining how I came up with the estimated date.

Legacy Family Tree software has all kinds of nifty date prefixes you can use and you can even customize them a bit. This is in Option 5.7. Hint – Est or Estimated is a valid prefix even though it isn't on the official list of prefixes. If you use Est or Estimated it will not trigger a date error.

To find the estimated dates option go the Options tab > Customize > 5. Dates. Then scroll down to 5.7 to see the list which includes about, after, before, between, calculated, circa and BC.

Find tech tips every day in the Facebook Legacy User Group. The group is free and is available to anyone with a Facebook account.

For video tech tips checkout the Legacy Quick Tips page. These short videos will make it easy for you to learn all sort of fun and interesting ways to look at your genealogy research.

Michele Simmons Lewis is part of the technical support team at Millennia, the makers of the Legacy Family Tree software program. With over 20 years of research experience, Michele’s passion is helping new genealogists get started on the right foot through her writings, classes and lectures. She is the former staff genealogist and weekly columnist for the McDuffie Mirror and now authors Ancestoring, a blog geared toward the beginner/intermediate researcher.

Comments (11)

I have used estimated dates for years, with very good results. I very often find that I have estimated the correct date to within 0 to 5 years, by using the following somewhat empirical guidelines for marriages up to about 1925:
1. Men usually married first at about 24 years of age.
2. Women usually married first at about 20 years of age.
3. The first child was usually born the first year after the parents’ marriage date.
4. Children were usually born about 2 years apart.
5. For marriages after about 1925, the man & woman are likely to be closer to the same age, perhaps the man will be one or two years older than the woman.
Of course, after better methods of birth control came along, it is anybody’s guess when the children were born.
These guidelines work well when calculated going forward or backward through the family.
I use est. for dates that I estimated, and abt. dates are dates that come to me from other researchers.
Therefore, if I have the birth date for at least one child, I can calculate very close birth and marriage dates for the parents. These estimated dates are a great help in almost any avenue of research that one pursues.

Dear Michelle,
I would put the season in the notes. There is something to the names that evoke emotion, memories of flowers, coloured leaves, harvest, snow, heat…
As was pointed out to me years ago, seasons can be misleading. Once you cross the equator the seasons flip and the dates change.
Also, even in the same hemisphere, the definitions of when seasons change can vary, never mind those years with “a long winter” or “an early spring”.
The other types of things I would put in notes include “early 1917″,”late 1923”, and “the mid 1940’s”. Any of these notes helps to match things up when I come across other sources.

Thanks for the tip. I had often used estimated dates for deaths, but hadn’t for births and marriages. I used an estimated date for a 1st cousin 4x removed and I found her marriage & death! Great!

Shellie,
If you want to enter dates like that you can but you will need to turn off Date Checking in the options menu and you will have to turn it off in the Potential Problems because that is a non standard way to record dates. I have to admit though, I like the way Spring 1917 looks 🙂 What you can do is send in a suggestion to the programmers asking that they add the seasons so that Date Checking and the Potential Problems ignore it. You can send your suggestion in here http://www.legacyfamilytree.local/suggest.asp If you send it in this way it will get logged into our tracking system and the programmers will consider it.

I sometimes wish I could put “Spring 1917” or “Winter 1923” (as this is the way that I find the information in newspapers and such) and still have Legacy understand it. I do use between dates for this, such as “bet Jan 1917 and Mar 1917” but considering that, unless I take the time to make notes, it sounds more specific than it actually is.

The genealogy community does not adequately address the inherent confusion in genealogy packages regarding date ranges. Many users place a hyphen between two dates. But this syntax is rejected by FamilySearch. Other users enter Between [beginningdate] and [endingdate]. Legacy, and probably other packages, provide no edit tool to convert the first syntax to the second.
More important than syntax issues, neither of these methods answers the following question: Did the user mean to say that (i) the event continued to exist during the entire period, or (ii) that the event occurred at some point in the period? Two different syntaxes need to be agreed upon convey each of the above.

The instructions above on how to enter Est. dates seem to be incomplete. Exactly where would Est. be entered on the 5.7 screen, in the Abt. field? Also, where would a user enter Ron Taylor’s suggestion of “Due”?

I began using est and circa dates when I started doing online searches of databases. Then I started using the in my software whenever I needed to fill in a generation with minimum information- having a placeholder date helps establish that generational place in time and the relational link to the child. I like that I have several options for expressing that guestimated date. It helps me to know what the parameters were when I chose it, and as you pointed out, it helps to narrow or widen the search parameters to make the results more useful. Thanks for pointing that out- even though I already used them, I hadn’t thought of it quite that way before.

Although I can see where estimated dates can be helpful in researching, I strongly recommend that when you put an estimated date, location or any other info that’s guessed at that you add a To-Do to find the correct information.
Legacy has a great tool in the Search window with the Missing Information tab. It will miss any fields that have any data in them and you may think you have the information you need when you really don’t. Also, with any info on those fields, the “Insert underlines for missing information” doesn’t work. This is a great option if you’re sharing the report with relatives or other researchers who might be able to help you fill in the blanks. It would be easy to miss the “est” in the body of a long report but the underlines really stand out!

I use the “About” when I know the date to within 5 years either way (usually within 1 year e.g. census records) and “Circa” for dates within 20 years either way (usually within 5 years, but occasionally can be outside the 40 year window).
Similar to your logic for searching find-a-grave etc. it is a good way of reducing the number of suggested duplicates when doing a merge.

One advantage to filling in all dates is the Tools>Other Tools>Sort Child, Marriage, and Event Lists. If all children of a family have a birthdate, then the sort can put them in order even if some of the dates are only estimated. Same with marriages, etc.
Another advantage is when searching the internet like for census records or find-a-grave. The likelihood of a match is higher when a date is part of the search.
There is a date prefix that Legacy needs to implement which I use in my own databases. It is “Due” and I use it when I have information about an expectant mother or a planned wedding because those are future dates. Then on a regular basis, I search for “Due” dates that are no longer future and try to change them to the actual dates. I suppose it could also be helpful in events like a graduation, future ordinance, planned change of residence, etc. Anyway, “Due” is how I book future dates.

H
Harlon

11 years ago

I have used estimated dates for years, with very good results. I very often find that I have estimated the correct date to within 0 to 5 years, by using the following somewhat empirical guidelines for marriages up to about 1925:
1. Men usually married first at about 24 years of age.
2. Women usually married first at about 20 years of age.
3. The first child was usually born the first year after the parents’ marriage date.
4. Children were usually born about 2 years apart.
5. For marriages after about 1925, the man & woman are likely to be closer to the same age, perhaps the man will be one or two years older than the woman.
Of course, after better methods of birth control came along, it is anybody’s guess when the children were born.
These guidelines work well when calculated going forward or backward through the family.
I use est. for dates that I estimated, and abt. dates are dates that come to me from other researchers.
Therefore, if I have the birth date for at least one child, I can calculate very close birth and marriage dates for the parents. These estimated dates are a great help in almost any avenue of research that one pursues.
L
Lana

11 years ago

Dear Michelle,
I would put the season in the notes. There is something to the names that evoke emotion, memories of flowers, coloured leaves, harvest, snow, heat…
As was pointed out to me years ago, seasons can be misleading. Once you cross the equator the seasons flip and the dates change.
Also, even in the same hemisphere, the definitions of when seasons change can vary, never mind those years with “a long winter” or “an early spring”.
The other types of things I would put in notes include “early 1917″,”late 1923”, and “the mid 1940’s”. Any of these notes helps to match things up when I come across other sources.
RH
Robert Halfyard

11 years ago

Thanks for the tip. I had often used estimated dates for deaths, but hadn’t for births and marriages. I used an estimated date for a 1st cousin 4x removed and I found her marriage & death! Great!
M
Michele

11 years ago

Shellie,
If you want to enter dates like that you can but you will need to turn off Date Checking in the options menu and you will have to turn it off in the Potential Problems because that is a non standard way to record dates. I have to admit though, I like the way Spring 1917 looks 🙂 What you can do is send in a suggestion to the programmers asking that they add the seasons so that Date Checking and the Potential Problems ignore it. You can send your suggestion in here http://www.legacyfamilytree.local/suggest.asp If you send it in this way it will get logged into our tracking system and the programmers will consider it.
SK
Shellie Karol-Chik

11 years ago

I sometimes wish I could put “Spring 1917” or “Winter 1923” (as this is the way that I find the information in newspapers and such) and still have Legacy understand it. I do use between dates for this, such as “bet Jan 1917 and Mar 1917” but considering that, unless I take the time to make notes, it sounds more specific than it actually is.
GL
Glenn Lane

11 years ago

The genealogy community does not adequately address the inherent confusion in genealogy packages regarding date ranges. Many users place a hyphen between two dates. But this syntax is rejected by FamilySearch. Other users enter Between [beginningdate] and [endingdate]. Legacy, and probably other packages, provide no edit tool to convert the first syntax to the second.
More important than syntax issues, neither of these methods answers the following question: Did the user mean to say that (i) the event continued to exist during the entire period, or (ii) that the event occurred at some point in the period? Two different syntaxes need to be agreed upon convey each of the above.
GL
Glenn Lane

11 years ago

The instructions above on how to enter Est. dates seem to be incomplete. Exactly where would Est. be entered on the 5.7 screen, in the Abt. field? Also, where would a user enter Ron Taylor’s suggestion of “Due”?
AS
Annie Stratton

11 years ago

I began using est and circa dates when I started doing online searches of databases. Then I started using the in my software whenever I needed to fill in a generation with minimum information- having a placeholder date helps establish that generational place in time and the relational link to the child. I like that I have several options for expressing that guestimated date. It helps me to know what the parameters were when I chose it, and as you pointed out, it helps to narrow or widen the search parameters to make the results more useful. Thanks for pointing that out- even though I already used them, I hadn’t thought of it quite that way before.
S
Sherry

11 years ago

Although I can see where estimated dates can be helpful in researching, I strongly recommend that when you put an estimated date, location or any other info that’s guessed at that you add a To-Do to find the correct information.
Legacy has a great tool in the Search window with the Missing Information tab. It will miss any fields that have any data in them and you may think you have the information you need when you really don’t. Also, with any info on those fields, the “Insert underlines for missing information” doesn’t work. This is a great option if you’re sharing the report with relatives or other researchers who might be able to help you fill in the blanks. It would be easy to miss the “est” in the body of a long report but the underlines really stand out!
LW
Leslie Williamson

11 years ago

I use the “About” when I know the date to within 5 years either way (usually within 1 year e.g. census records) and “Circa” for dates within 20 years either way (usually within 5 years, but occasionally can be outside the 40 year window).
Similar to your logic for searching find-a-grave etc. it is a good way of reducing the number of suggested duplicates when doing a merge.
RT
Ron Taylor

11 years ago

One advantage to filling in all dates is the Tools>Other Tools>Sort Child, Marriage, and Event Lists. If all children of a family have a birthdate, then the sort can put them in order even if some of the dates are only estimated. Same with marriages, etc.
Another advantage is when searching the internet like for census records or find-a-grave. The likelihood of a match is higher when a date is part of the search.
There is a date prefix that Legacy needs to implement which I use in my own databases. It is “Due” and I use it when I have information about an expectant mother or a planned wedding because those are future dates. Then on a regular basis, I search for “Due” dates that are no longer future and try to change them to the actual dates. I suppose it could also be helpful in events like a graduation, future ordinance, planned change of residence, etc. Anyway, “Due” is how I book future dates.