One of the most important features of a genealogical profile for a person or a family are the events that they went through during their life or relationships. Events hold an important place in the Gedcom standard. Now, what are events?
Several genealogical software programs, most notoriously Family Tree Maker, call them Facts. I find that limiting as so often a fact is merely an attribute that is not associated with a time or place in a person’s life. There is a place for Facts, but Events are the way that some many of a life’s chronology are driven.
What is an Event?
An Event is something that occurred during a person’s life or during the course of a family relationship. All Events have a name or type; a description that somehow modifies or better identifies the event; a date when the event happened; a place where the event happened; and notes that may elaborate on what happened as a result of the event. Events may have attached media to illustrate the event; and, of course, an event may have a source attached to identify where the information about the event was obtained. I will elaborate on all of these aspects of an event later.
In genealogical terms, there are two major types of events: Vital and Custom.
Vital Events
The major vital events in a person’s life are Birth and Death. They can happen only once, although records may share different details of when and where they happened. When a researcher finds conflicting evidence as to either the date or the place of a birth or death, then the researcher is obliged to review the evidence from the conflicting source records and make an assertion as to which details to record for a person’s birth or death. (I strongly support the technology used by the Evidentia application for arriving at such conclusions.) When you have conflicting evidence that is credible, it is wise to add “Alt. Birth” or “Alt. Death” events to the person’s profile to keep the records of the conflicting information in case further records might be uncovered that might change your assertions.
In most genealogy applications, two other personal vital events are usually included: Baptism and Burial. These both have the attributes that they might not be unique. A person might be baptized as an infant and then get baptized into different faith traditions later in life. Of course, Baptism is predominantly a Christian concept; however, other faith traditions will have their own event that serves a similar purpose. Infant baptism or similar infant faith indoctrination events are important genealogically as quite often those events will be recorded, whereas births are not, and can be used a an alternate to a birth event for identifying when a child was born.
My standard for recording a birth date when only a baptism event is known is to record the birth date as “before <baptism date>”; eg, if the child was baptized on 26th June 1743, I will record the child’s birth date as bef. 26 June 1743. I will not assume that the child was born in the location where the baptism happened. Of course, I will only do this if the baptism was an infant baptism, say an estimated under 2 years old. If the baptism was obviously not an infant baptism or was a subsequent baptism, I will add a Baptism Custom Event to document that event. If I have conflicting records about the date or place of any baptism, I will create an “Alt. Baptism” event to keep a record of that conflicting information.
When I record the place of a baptism, I prefer to include not only the geographic location but also the actual place of the baptism if it is known. When I discuss event places later in this essay, you will see that for most events, I like to identify the place only by the geographic location and leave the notes or description field to identify the specific location.
Burial is often needed as a death substitute as is infant baptism. The only record of a death might be the record of the person’s burial. As with infant baptism, I will record the death date as a “Bef. <burial date>” when needed. Unlike a baptism, a burial is likely to be within a few days of the death. Again, I do not assume the place of burial is same as the place of death. Conversely, if I have a death date and a burial locations, I will always record a date of burial as “After <death date>”. I think it is a mistake to leave the burial date blank when a burial location is identified.
Burial’s have a lot of important recording considerations. Yes, you can get conflicting details on when and where a burial took place that might need to be recorded in “Alt. Burial” events. But it is all too common that a person’s body is reburied because of cemetery closure or family considerations. In my study, I have a case where a husband’s body was moved and reburied twice because his widow moved and wanted him near to where she lived. In these cases, I use a “Reburial” custom event.
When I record the location in either a burial or reburial event, I will identify the location in a cemetery by where it is or would be today. The location field might read something like “Burial Hill, Plymouth, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, USA” rather than the location as it might have been known when the burial took place. If I don’t know where the burial took place, I will use the location of the church where the funeral took place; I will not, for instance, assume that the burial took place in the Churchyard where the funeral took place. If I have a record that the burial did take place in the churchyard, then, of course, I will so document.
I record Cremation as a separate event. If I know that a cremation took place and that the funeral took place at the crematorium, I will so document. I will not document a burial for the person who was cremated unless I know that the cremains were “buried” there.
I do not often use the Funeral event, but it should be used when between the burial and cremation event the story is not told correctly or you have media of some sort (Funeral Card, Recording) that need to be placed somewhere.
There is a related burial event that needs to be documented and that is the Cenotaph. This is a monument, usually in a cemetery, to memorialize a person who is not buried in the location. This could happen because of a death at sea or in a war. In repositories like FindaGrave and Billiongraves, it is not uncommon to find two memorials for the same person with one being a cenotaph.
In the Jewish faith, you could have Custom Vital Events for Briss, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, etc. If a person was of the LDS faith, you could have events for their Ordinances.
