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[add comment] [edit] No need for alt birth info [27 November 2013]In a situation like this, where it is unlikely that the birth year is known, and there is very little information to help pinpoint a birth year, it seems overkill to include both a birth year and an alt birth year. In this particular situation, I am the one who estimated the birth year as 1150, based on Cawley, and I would be very happy if my estimate was within 10-15 years, given the lack of data from this early time period. If you have solid information that she was 30 in 1185, and therefore born about 1155, I would simply replace the estimated birth year with this, rather than creating alternate info. However, I am a bit suspicious of the source for her age in this case. I have not looked at the source (it does not appear to be online), but Cawley also quotes a source from 1185 in regards to Alda, and he neither mentions her age nor estimates her birth year. This makes me wonder if Farrer was estimating her age rather than quoting a primary source for her age. If Farrer is estimating her age, then we have 2 estimates within 5 years of each other, and can just pick one (or settle for somewhere in the middle). If she was born in 1155, she would have been 14 at the birth of her first child - and according to what I see online, medieval girls typically hit puberty at 12-14, and were married when they did - so that scenario is certainly feasible. At the time I estimated 1150, I was not certain about the age of puberty, and probably took into consideration the fact that her first known (i.e., surviving) child might not have been her first child. I might have guessed that she was 17 or 18 when her daughter was born, and then rounded to the nearest 5 years. I note that I have estimated Alda's grandfather's birth year at least 10 years earlier than Cawley did. Changing Alda's estimated birth year to 1155 would allow adjusting her father's (and mother's) and grandfather's birth years and bring the latter more in line with Cawley's estimate. So feel free to do that. Again - with these early records, estimating a birth year within 10-15 years of when it actually occurred (which we may never know) should be considered great, and there should be no need to include alt birth information. (If you are concerned about birth place, I did not change what had been in the page to start with - it is where her father was "of" and possibly where she was born. If you are not comfortable with that, change it to what you are comfortable with (England, at least).)--DataAnalyst 00:12, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
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