Age at Death

[Jennie]

I am getting on very well entering info but I find a lot of ages at death are coming out wrong. I'll try and explain. When you 'edit person' and enter date of death, because I sometimes don't have an exact date of birth, just a year or quarter, I find the age that appears on the family file is often a year out. I realise why but would like to be able to correct this as most times I have an exact date of death with age, from certs etc. Sorry if I'm not explaining this well.

Thanks,
Jennie

[dseifert]

Can you tweek the death year + or - to make the age at death correct?

[Bob White]

Your statement is confusing as you say you don't have an exact date and then in the next sentence you say you do most of the time. Putting that aside, just click on the birthdate box for the person you need to edit. This will cause an editing window to appear. Correct the birthdate and Save.

[Frank Mitchell]

I am getting on very well entering info but I find a lot of ages at death are coming out wrong. I'll try and explain. When you 'edit person' and enter date of death, because I sometimes don't have an exact date of birth, just a year or quarter, I find the age that appears on the family file is often a year out. I realise why but would like to be able to correct this as most times I have an exact date of death with age, from certs etc. Sorry if I'm not explaining this well.

Thanks,
Jennie
I think within a year is good enough.

Remember that the age on a death certificate is merely what the informant told the registrar at the time.

Often the informant doesn't know the decedant's exact age and gives his/her "best guess" - nobody will check. I have had ages 10 years out given by a son.

I suggest you put the true dates into Reunion and don't bother about what age it shows (within reason).

Frank

[Ron Snowden]

Older death certificates from England and Scotland list the dates of death by calendar quarters (i.e. January, February and March) instead of the actual date. It is difficult putting these into a DOB window because it comes up as an "error."

If the actual date of death is known, then no problem. For historical accuracy, the ACTUAL date is what we strive for. However, I have chosen to insert the middle month of the quarter when nothing else is known. I believe that will be statistically closer than something unrecognized by the operating system; and any error will be more easily understood.

I hope this helps, at least with a portion of the question.

Ron

[David G. Kanter]

Older death certificates from England and Scotland list the dates of death by calendar quarters (i.e. January, February and March) instead of the actual date. It is difficult putting these into a DOB window because it comes up as an "error."Might you be referring to the fact that Reunion will respond to a date entry of, say, "Jan-Mar 1850"--a non-standard date--by opening its Custom Date window? If so, that's not an error, but rather advice that while you can put that text string in the date field, it's asking for confirmation that it wasn't a typing error and it needs you to enter a standard date as the Sort Date if you wish it do the things described in that window. (Reunion will proposed a Sort Date based on trying to find a real date in the text string you entered.)If the actual date of death is known, then no problem. For historical accuracy, the ACTUAL date is what we strive for. However, I have chosen to insert the middle month of the quarter when nothing else is known. I believe that will be statistically closer than something unrecognized by the operating system; and any error will be more easily understood.While the Sort Date can be left null (i.e., empty), if you wish to continue your practice regarding use of the middle month in the absence of better information, you can enter that middle month and year as the Sort Date.

So, by entering the known quarter information as a Custom Date, the displayed date will reflect only what you know and, if you wish Reunion to use a "close-enough" real date for those other described purposes, put the middle month and year as the Sort Date.

[Frank Mitchell]

Older death certificates from England and Scotland list the dates of death by calendar quarters (i.e. January, February and March) instead of the actual date.

Ron
Ron,
Perhaps you are thinking of the General Record Office indexes?

These are collected by quarter years according to the date of registration and are freely available to the public. The first quarter is Jan to Mar, known as the "March Quarter"...and so on.

The actual certificates must be paid for, and all the old UK death certificates that I have show actual dates of death. Of course, the registration itself (also on the certificate) could have been in the next (or later) quarter.

Frank

[Ron Snowden]

Thanks to all for the information. Yes, I am speaking of the indexes. I have sent off for some actual certificates--which hopefully show the actual dates. As a newcomer to Reunion, I am learning--and enjoy the help and conversation available on this site.

I hope Jennie's question has been answered as well. Didn't mean to hog the show!

Also, Roger Moffat helped with conversion of my files yesterday, which was a big help. I see what to do now, and appreciate his thoughtfulness very much.

[David G. Kanter]

I am getting on very well entering info but I find a lot of ages at death are coming out wrong. I'll try and explain. When you 'edit person' and enter date of death, because I sometimes don't have an exact date of birth, just a year or quarter, I find the age that appears on the family file is often a year out.Beyond the earlier advice about being careful regarding the accuracy of a separately reported age and, thus, caution about not changing entered dates just to make the Reunion-calculated Age be different, do consider that Reunion's calculation of Age when there are non-exact dates involved relies upon what exact date Reunion substitutes when doing the age calculation. Search the Manual for "age" and select "4. Ages, How Are Ages Calculated?". This can readily account for an Age being off by 1 year--if not more.

If, and only if, you have confidence in the separately reported age and the calculated Age is off by 1 year because of the default substitution for a non-exact date, then use Reunion's "Custom Date" capability both to more narrowly define the non-exact date that's displayed and, by stipulating a Sort Date, "force" the calculated Age to be correct.

For example: If the Birth Date is currently entered as just 1845 (as concluded from your research) and Death Date is entered as 7 Mar 1905 (again, from your research), the Age will be 60 because Reunion has substituted 1 Jan 1845 for the non-exact Birth Date when calculating Age. If there is also high confidence that the age at death is 59, you can infer the day & month of this person's birth is after the day & month of the death. I'd edit the Birth Date to "1845 (after 7 Mar)"--which Reunion will recognize as a Custom Date--and I would enter a Sort Date of 8 Mar 1845, or some other date that's after 7 Mar in 1845. Reunion will then calculate the Age as 59 and all aspects of your research will be reflected. Note: Reunion will have proposed a Sort Date of Mar 1845, but don't accept that as it, in turn, would become 1 Mar 1845 when calculating Age--still producing Age as 60. Using a Sort Date of Apr 1845, however, would be fine to produce Age as 59.

When I make date or place entries based on an inference--such as the "1845 (after 7 Mar)" in my example--in additional to whatever Sources I've cited for that Event (or General Source for the person), I also put in the Event's Memo an explicit explanation of the basis of the entry. In the case of my example, I'd make a Memo of "Date's 'after 7 Mar' based on death at age 59.".

[Jennie]

Bob,

Sorry to be confusing but what I said was I often don't have EXACT date of birth, just a year or quarter but do have exact date of death and age from cert. An example is my grandfather who was born in Dec but was not registered until Mar Q of following year. If I had not had his birth info and had only his death cert his age would have been miscalculated by Reunion. I realise Reunion doesn't know whether a person has had a birthday or not so that is why the ages were coming out wrong. What I wanted to know was how to overcome this problem. I am not happy with 'near enough' info I always strive to get things correct.

David, thank you. You appear to know exactly what I mean and I appreciate your answer although I will have to read through it several more times to absorb it.

Also, thanks to everyone for making an interesting thread.

Jennie

[Tom Robinson]

For example: If the Birth Date is currently entered as just 1845 (as concluded from your research) and Death Date is entered as 7 Mar 1905 (again, from your research), the Age will be 60 because Reunion has substituted 1 Jan 1845 for the non-exact Birth Date when calculating Age. If there is also high confidence that the age at death is 59, you can infer the day & month of this person's birth is after the day & month of the death. I'd edit the Birth Date to "1845 (after 7 Mar)"--which Reunion will recognize as a Custom Date--and I would enter a Sort Date of 8 Mar 1845, or some other date that's after 7 Mar in 1845.
Or you could enter a birth date of 'abt Apr 1845', and Reunion will calculate a death age of 59 without you having to worry about custom dates and sort dates...

[David G. Kanter]

Or you could enter a birth date of 'abt Apr 1845', and Reunion will calculate a death age of 59 without you having to worry about custom dates and sort dates...Indeed, but it's then a question of what range of uncertainty do you wish to imply by the Birth Date entry--and I see a difference.

For me, "abt Apr 1845" implies that range extends some indeterminate amount both before and after Apr 1845. In the situation I described, as there'd be a determinate range, I'd want it to be explicitly limited by discrete end points (i.e. 8 Mar 1845 to 31 Dec 1845, inclusive); hence the suggested "1845 (after 7 Mar)". As I was hypothesizing that Jennie had no information to "weight" the Birth Date to or around even a single month, I suggested that Birth Date entry as I felt it more exactly said just what was known about the that situation--something that Reunion's Custom Dates, and the Sort Date entry, make easy to do. But, hey, that's just my opinion.