Person talk:Alda de Beauchamp (1)


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)


I completely agree. For many of these early folks we wound up with a variety of "alt" dates as a consequence of de-duplicating from multiple GEDCOM uploads. Overwhelmingly, such dates are utterly unsourced - so don't worry about disproving unsourced stuff back in these ages! --jrm03063 02:53, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
I am completely in favour of deleting unsourced information, or estimates without a rationale. I left yours in as an alt, as I didn't want to offend, and you had provided a rationale. I figured you had not seen the Farrer, but just in case.... Farrer is not estimating. He is citing a primary source. It is true that births were not often recorded in the medieval period, but ages frequently were in legal records. A fuller cite: "It was presented by the hundred of Barford, Beds., in 1185 that Alda who was the daughter of Hugh de Beauchamp and late the wife of William Malbanc, was of the king's gift, aged 30 years, and that she had 4 daughters, the eldest being of the age of 16 and in ward of Hugh de Beauchamp; Roxton ('Cokesdune') was her maritagium." [R. de Dominabus. 30] The Farrer book is available if you search on the LDS "Family History Books" page (as are an impressive number of other useful books).--Werebear 02:42, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I added a link to the primary source which both Cawley and Farrer were citing, and which is online (as most of Cawley's sources are). It turns out that Farrer was simply giving a more complete cite (in translation.)--Werebear 03:08, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Works for me. Thanks. I was surprised about Cawley missing the chance to approximate her birth year, but then I remembered that he has done more in-depth work in some areas than others - it takes a long time to compile and verify all the information within his scope. Thanks for pointing out the additional online source for books (LDS) - I had forgotten about it.--DataAnalyst 01:17, 27 November 2013 (UTC)