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Quick reference
Enter the major genealogical events in a person’s life (birth/christening, marriage, death/burial). Optionally, create a limited number of additional significant events and facts (preferably no more than 10 facts/events in total).
Do not include information known to be incorrect, even if it is commonly assigned to the person or family. Instead, address incorrect information in the narrative and/or source citations.
Support facts and events with source citations. Usage
Enter major genealogical events in a person’s life (birth/christening, marriage, death/burial).
Create additional facts/events for other significant events and facts that give a sense of the person's life and/or help a reader determine if they have found who they were looking for. Depending on the time and place, the following are suggestions for significant events and facts:
- Other places the person lived (residence)
- Emigration/immigration
- Occupation/employment
- Participation in the military
- Education/degree/ordination
- Religion
- Divorce
- Noble title
- Will, probate, estate inventory/settlement, obituary, and/or funeral, when neither death nor burial date is known
- Adoption (especially with a link to the adoptive parents/child)
- Speculative or refuted family relationships
Proxy events
Like many genealogy applications, WeRelate treats christening date as a proxy for birth date when the birth date is unknown, and burial date as a proxy for death date when the death date is unknown. WeRelate conventions for proxy events are as follows:
- Do not put a proxy date in the field (birth or death date) it is a proxy for. Instead, put proxy dates in their own fields. That is, enter a christening date in the christening date field and a burial date in the burial date field.
- Do not make assumptions about birth date or place based on christening date and place, nor about death date or place based on burial date and place, to avoid misleading other researchers. When only a proxy date is known, do not enter anything in the event it is a proxy for. If you enter a date or place in birth or death fields, it prevents WeRelate from displaying the proxy date in search results and at the top of the Person page, giving other researchers less information than an exact christening or burial date.
- On the other hand, if the christening record indicates the age of the child, to the day, the birth date can be calculated and put in the birth date field with the modifier "Cal".
- In addition to the christening fields, WeRelate also has a baptism event (use "Add event/fact" to add it). If there is no birth or christening information, WeRelate uses the baptism date as a proxy for the birth date.
- For groups of people that practice adult baptism (e.g., Baptists, Mennonites), the baptism event should be used instead of the christening event because "christening" implies the naming of an infant. As well, when it is clear from a record that a person was baptized as an adult (or even as an older child), the baptism event should be used instead of the christening event. This will signal to other researchers that the person may not have been born within months of the baptism date.
- If there is no birth or christening date and it is inappropriate to use the baptism date as a proxy for birth date, add an estimated birth year.
- Just as burial date and place should be allowed to stand on their own when the death date is unknown, death date and place shouldn't be used to derive burial date and place. Readers are capable of guessing that a burial occurred shortly after death, probably near the location of the death, so it is not useful (and may be misleading) to provide estimates without evidence. Only enter burial date and/or place if you can provide evidence for the exact date and/or place.
Similar conventions apply to other dates that WeRelate doesn't use as proxies:
- Do not use the date of will as the date of death. The dates of a will and/or estate inventory or probate may be useful for constraining the death date when the actual death date is unknown, as in Bet 6 Jun 1779 and 13 Sep 1779, but wills are often written years before death, and it is not uncommon for probate to be delayed several years after death, so these should never be used as the death date.
- Likewise, do not enter marriage banns or intention information as a marriage event. Using "Add event/fact", add an event called "Marriage Banns" and enter the date and place there.
Additional conventions
- Include only what you believe to be true. Don't include information known to be incorrect, just because someone else has it and you think someone might search for it. If you feel it is necessary to refute incorrect information, do so in the narrative or reference section.
- Exception: Speculative and refuted relationships can be placed in facts using the appropriate templates.
- Limit the number of facts/events to no more than 15 (preferably no more than 10). Any more than that makes it hard to quickly pick out significant information, and may make the information more difficult to absorb than if it were in a narrative.
- Limit repetition. If a person lived in the same place for 3 censuses in a row, create one residence fact with a date range (or no additional fact at all if the person was born, lived, and died in the same place).
- Combine information into a single fact when feasible, such as occupation and residence in a single occupation fact, or death and cause of death in a single death event.
- Use “alt” facts sparingly.
- An exact date is a legitimate alternative to another exact date (e.g., 22 Feb 1833 vs 22 Feb 1834), but an approximate date should not be created as an alternative to an exact date unless the exact date is uncertain (and documented as such).
- An approximate or estimated date should never be used as an alternative to another approximate or estimated date. Instead, find a way to express the degree of uncertainty in a single date field (e.g., a date range or an estimate). If appropriate, document different estimates from different sources in the source citations.
- An exact place is a legitimate alternative to another exact place (e.g., Colyton, Devon, England vs Axmouth, Devon, England), but it is also acceptable to enter an inexact place (e.g., Devon, England) and present the alternatives in the description field (e.g., Colyton or Axmouth).
- Before creating a fact/event, consider its genealogical purpose. For example:
- A census may provide evidence of a number of things (approx. birth year, birthplace, residence, occupation, education level, etc.) but is not a significant event in itself.
- Being mentioned in a will or obituary is evidence of a relationship and should go in the reference section rather than the fact/event section.
- Registering for a draft for a war may be evidence of a full name, a birthdate, a relationship, and/or a residence. Don't create an event of type Military for the act of registering for a draft.
- Playing a secondary role in an event from someone else's life (e.g., witnessing a will or a deed, administering an estate, or being a godparent) may be evidence of a relationship, a residence, or just that the person was alive at the time. Information about the event and the person's role in it should go in the reference section. An appropriate event can be created or an existing event supported, but don't create Will, Probate, Property, or Baptism events for a person playing a secondary role in one of these events.
- Please use emigration and immigration event types correctly (they are frequently misused).
- Emigration is always from a place. The place name should be the place the person left.
- Immigration is always to a place. The place name should be the place they moved to.
- Don't create events for LDS ordinance information. Track this information at the FamilySearch site instead.
- Support facts and events with source citations and/or notes to explain estimates and assumptions (source citations and notes display in the References section).
Why enter data this way
WeRelate serves a diverse audience with varying degrees of interest in any given page.
- Many readers are simply trying to figure out if the page describes a person or family they are interested in, so they can avoid creating a duplicate page. For these readers, a concise presentation of the most significant facts and events is most helpful.
- Other readers are related to the person but not closely enough to have a particular interest in learning more than the "who, where, when" of their lives. These readers generally want to grasp the significant facts and events about their relative and will be frustrated by unnecessary repetition or inclusion of every little detail. Attention tends to wander after about 7-10 items in a list, and they might miss something that would otherwise interest them if it is at the end of a lengthy list. Incorporating less significant details in a well-organized narrative gives them the option of exploring more if they wish to.
- A few readers will be highly interested in the person. These readers might be willing to read a more lengthy list of facts and events, but are also likely to read (and appreciate) a narrative where they can find the details omitted from the facts and events section.
Putting information known to be incorrect in the facts and events section can confuse readers, especially those looking for a quick overview to determine if the page represents the person they are looking for.
Related information and tasks
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