Error message is inappropriate

Question

Perry-5500 (mother) was buried on 2 Oct 1818. I have indicated that her death occurred before this date.

Her son, Swingwood-10, was baptised on 4 Oct 1818. I have indicated that he was born before this date.

When I try to save editing for either of them, I get a message indicating that the mother died before the son was born. This is not an unusual situation. Many women died in childbirth back then, or soon afterwards. How should this be resolved?

Comments

Sorry to say, but Ancestry Com has data on this family see below.  Not sure, but I think Ancestry has a free use period, not sure of the time frame, to  try it out.  You may want to try it out.. There is more data than this.

England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.   England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975. Salt Lake City, Utah: FamilySearch, 2013. Transcritption:

Eliza Swingewood
Gender:	Female
Baptism Date:	27 Mar 1814
Baptism Place:	Warrington, Lancashire, England
Father:	William Swingewood
Mother:	Elizabeth
FHL Film Number:	1468986
Reference ID:	yr 1813-1818 p 71

Not saying this is your William, but worth investigating.

England & Wales, Christening Index, 1530-1980 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Opertions, Inc., 2008.  : Genealogical Society of Utah. British Isles Vital Records Index, 2nd Edition. Salt Lake City, Utah: Intellectual Reserve, copyright 2002. Used by permission.  Transcription:

William Swingwood
Gender:	Male
Christening Date:	5 Jun 1785
Christening Place:	Longton, Staffordshire, England

---

I have spent hours looking at Family Search, Ancestry, Find My Past and My Heritage. Find My Past has another William Swingwood born in 1781 in Stafford, and the original gedcom that was uploaded had yet another different baptism date and place. It is impossible to know which one is correct, if any.

---

I don't think the message is inappropriate. You know he was born before his mother was buried, so adjust his birthdate accordingly.

Answer 1

If I have a baptism date and no birth date, I enter the birth year only.

Comments

But you cannot decide on the year in some cases.  For instance, if the child was baptised in January 1818, how do you decide if the child was born in 1818 or 1817 (or even earlier, in some cases?)  Not all children were baptised within weeks.

---

Normally, before birth dates were recorded, a child would be baptised within a few days after birth. I don't think that it matters a lot if the child is born say on 28 December 1808 and then baptised on 2 January 1809, whether the birth year is recorded as 1808 or 1809. Personally I always enter the year the child was baptised as the birth year, even if the baptism was held on 1 January. That seems like a rather widespread convention here in Norway.

---

In Lutheran Scandinavia the clergy was strict about baptism within the first week. The population in general lived in fear that an unbaptized child would attract the devil. So law and superstition went hand in hand.

I have learned here in G2G that there were factors (like fees) in other parts of Christianity that led to delayed baptisms - whole batches of siblings, older and younger, being renatus at the same time.

Answer 2

The proper way of having this resolved would be for the embedded validation system in WikiTree to start taking the "before" and "after" markers into account, which it does not at the moment.

I'm sorry that I have no good advice for workarounds.

Answer 3

You get the message, but you also get a "Save anyway" button. Click that. Yes, I know the message will turn up again and again, but the Save anyway button is the only way to solve that now.