Yes, your Tombstone event is very similar to my Cemetery event. And yes,
turning off Potential Problems by editing the Event Definition will eliminate
the “date out of range” error. The problem with such a shotgun approach is that
you are now free to enter anything in the date field you wish. For example, if
you intended to enter a date in 1963 but erroneously entered 1863 (100 years
early), that date would happily be accepted by Legacy and report that the
person was something like -32 (negative 32) years old at the time. It would not
display any red exclamation mark and your only clue that something was wrong is
if you happened to notice the placement of the event being either first or
somewhere in the middle instead of the expected last event. (Thank you Legacy
for including the sorting all events automatically by a calculated age in
version 8.) I’d much rather have the option to turn off the problem for “Events
or Facts after the date of death” (which apparently is what the programmers did
automatically for BURIAL and OBITUARY events.) This is the option that appears
to be not working for user created events.
As a side note, I even tried for a short while to create my Cemetery event
without a date requirement by editing the Event Definition. After all, I was
using just the same date as the burial date and it does seem redundant to need
to use that date again. But when I leave the DATE field out of the event
definition, Legacy will automatically sort undated events to the top. It's
purely a matter of opinion, but having an event called Cemetery, Tombstone, or
any other similar name appear as the very first event in a person's life just
doesn't seem right to me. Thus, I opted to include a date with my Cemetery
event. In that case, it becomes the last event in a person's event unless there
happened to be an obituary published after the funeral service.
As far as entering the date of death based on the date of the census
enumeration, ("after 23 Jan 1920" in your example below), that may appear to
work but in some instances could be factually misleading. All census
enumerations are based on a specific date set by the regional or federal
governments. Even if it took the enumerator 2 or 3 months to get to that
household, the census data entered should be as of the official census date and
not the enumerators visitation date. In our example, the 1920 census was as of
1 January regardless of the enumerators date of visit. So if a person died on 2
January, just one day after the official census, they would still be listed on
the 1920 census even if the enumerator didn’t get around to visiting that
household until February or March. I think the worst case scenario of delayed
enumerations came with the 1870 US Census which was dated 1 Jun 1870 but many
enumerations were not performed until August and September. Many people would
have died during those months but were supposed to be listed because they were
alive and well on 1 Jun 1870 or 1 Jan 1920 or whatever would be the official
census date. I think Congress got around to appropriating more money so they
could hire more enumerators on subsequent census years. And yes, there are
probably many census records where the enumerators never followed the rules
that they were given. For example, I’ve seen 1 month old infants listed that I
know were actually born just past the official cut-off date and therefore
should not have been listed. This is all part of what makes genealogy fun.
Brian in CA
--------------------------------------------
From: Leon Chapman [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2014 1:17 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Potential Problem Checker
Brian:
I created a new event called "Tombstone" which I use frequently with an
attached picture.
Normally the Tombstone is not present when a person is buried, but is installed
later (I know there are exceptions).
I will normally use a date of a week or so later if I don't know when the
Tombstone was placed.
Of course, this shows up in the potential problem areas for these Tombstone
events.
My solution was to Edit the Master event (go to View, Master Lists, Event
Definition & Edit the Event Definition) and Turn Off of the Potential Problem
List simply by checking the box to "Exclude from Potential Problems Report".
Once I have done that, my special event, "Tombstone", no longer is shown in any
of the Potential Problem Reports or Red circles regardless of what date I use
for the Tombstone event.
I would think you could do that for the Cemetery Event and then you will not
have any problems going forward.
Your example of the Census event being 22 Jan 1920 and you have his death Aft 1
Jan 1920 should always appear in the problems report. I would think you would
correct the death date to be Aft 23 Jan 1920. You have hard evidence that he
was alive on 22 Jan 1920, so creating a death event before 22 January 1920
should always return a potential problem -- it seems obvious that one of the
dates is incorrect and should be corrected.Â
Leon Chapman
On 12/10/14, 12:52 PM, Brian L. Lightfoot wrote:
OK, a little more resolution on the problem after staying up half the night
comparing various individuals and events. I've mostly ignored the problem
indicators for the past few months until now figuring that I'd eventually
handle that task. Anyhow, what I now see is as Brian in Support had indicated
that some events are hard coded to not generated a date error. It seems these
events are BURIAL and OBITUARY which makes sense as usually the burial is after
the date of death. :-) But now on to the problem events that could generate a
date error after death. These include a Census Event and a Cemetery event.
There may be others depending upon how or what the user creates.
I have opted to use the date on the census event as the date that the
enumerator actually visited the household and it's the date that is entered on
the census form. The error "Event date is out of range" will occur on a
person's last Census Event. For example, if I have no exact date of death for a
person but he was listed on a 1920 Census, I will enter his date of death
"After 1 Jan 1920" (assuming that he was born at least 100 years ago), which is
the date that census was supposed to represent of who was alive and lived at
the residence on that date. However, the actual Census Event that I create is
dated "22 Jan 1920" which was the date of the enumerator's visit. You'd think
that "AFTER" would mean just about anything after a date but it looks like
Legacy assumes anything that is AFTER a date of death to be "out of range" ---
anything other than a Burial date or an Obituary date. There are some older
German Census records in which deceased persons were listed. Don't ask me why t
hey did that but in each of those cases, an "out of range" error would also be
generated if the census was after the date of death.
Now the important thing here is to not argue the validity of using the
enumerator's date of visit for a census or how to properly handle the German
deceased persons on a census, but to look at the functionality of the option to
exclude "Events or Facts after a death date" which generate errors. With that
box NOT checked, no error should be generated, yet Legacy is indeed showing a
date error. Am I wrong in thinking that is a bug?
An example of the last Census Event error goes like this:
DIED: Aft 1 Jan 1920
1920 Census Event; Date 22 Jan 1920 (date out of range error generated)
Another event that I create is CEMETERY. I use it to show descriptions about
the gravestone, FAG memorial numbers, photos of the gravestone, and other
details rather that use the BURIAL Notes or Address tabs. I find it a lot
easier to search for and create lists of burials within a specific cemetery.
However, this user created event called Cemetery needs a date and so I enter
that same as the BURIAL date. There are even a few cases of where the deceased
person was re-buried a few years later in a different cemetery which would
require a date different than the original hard coded BURIAL date. In either
case, this user created event of CEMETERY will generate a date out of range
error. And once again, the setting of excluding events or facts after the date
of death has no effect.
An example of the Cemetery error goes like this:
DIED: 28 May 1926
BURIED: 31 May 1926 (no date error)
OBITUARY: 7 Jun 1926 (no error)
CEMETERY: 31 May 1926 (date out of range error generated even though it's the
same as the BURIAL date which was not out of range; my settings are to exclude
Events and Facts after death date)
Bottom line: It's not really a major problem and doesn't affect report
generation. I can continue to ignore these types of problems. Hopefully some
future update will take a look as why the exclusion setting is not working or
maybe make sure Census Events are hard coded to be excluded.
Brian in CA
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