How do you add someone to your tree if you don't know their b. date or d. date. [closed]

Question

The Brown family is very secretive.

Comments

 The Brown family may be "secretive" but in actuality, Erin, they have that legal right to refuse to give information to any private individual. They're obligated to answer questions only to the civil authorities (city, county, state, federal) and only in reference to matters that are in the purview of those civil authorities. 

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The OP is the brown family and her 2nd great-grandmother Brown was born in 1879.  I'm not sure that secrecy was the point of the question.

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No way to know in any case whatever their motive may be -- if the members of the Brown family will not confirm or deny, then that's it

She'll need to rely on records (sources) located and she's said she has those 

Answer 1

Hi, Erin.  You will notice that when you are in the Edit mode or first entering data for a new profile you have several options for the date fields: about/uncertain, exact/certain, before this date, or after this date. If you have enough information to include a well-informed estimate for a year and the person is properly connected upstream or downstream then that well-informed estimate is acceptable. In the profile narrative, it is a good idea to state the date is estimated and to state how you arrived at the estimate (perhaps birth years of siblings, marriage dates, wills in which they may be mentioned, etc).

Comments

Thank you

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There's also a template that you can add to the profile that creates a banner so that anyone who happens across the profile will know that there is an estimated date.

You can enter it like this:

{{Estimated Date | Birth}}

This also places the profile in the Estimated Birth Date category: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Estimated_Birth_Date (this takes a while to load -- there are far too many profiles in that category ... yikes!)

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{{Estimated Date}} on its own is for birth, or  you can use the one with the parameter for birth, as Julie has posted it, above.
You can also "mix and match" the parameters for which datum isn't / data aren't known :
{{Estimated Date|Marriage}}

{{Estimated Date|Death}}

{{Estimated Date|Birth, Death}}

{{Estimated Date|Birth, Marriage, Death}}

{{Estimated Date|Birth, Marriage}}

{{Estimated Date|Marriage, Death}}

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It's just a personal preference but I don't like the big giant banners created be the {{Estimated Date|....}} which look a lot like the Unsourced banner. I'm not sure they are necessary or add to a profile when it is stated there is an estimate and a reason given in the narrative. When you get into Medieval period the banners could be applied to a very large number of profiles without, it seems to me, an actual benefit.

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thank you very much