Do you create profiles for children where nothing is known other than a name?

+14 votes
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I am working on some profiles where I know the names of children, from wills, litigation, property settlements, etc., where I know nothing else other than the name.  I don't have a birth date, death date, spouse, children etc.  I could create very broad ranges for dates.

For example, it was very common in medieval fines for parents to settle property on their eldest son with remainders to the rest of their children.  So, this gives the names of all children, but nothing else.

Do you create profiles for these people for completeness of their parents profiles?  Or do you just list the names of these children in some section of the biography.
in Policy and Style by Joe Cochoit G2G6 Pilot (255k points)

3 Answers

+8 votes
 
Best answer
My opinion obviously differs from just about everyone I think. Why not add them? It's information? What is the cost? A few electrons? In some cases you have to. I can think of a case recently when a "daughter" with no name, no birth record and no death date had a son who was the progenitor of a large family. The person surly needed to be created to link that family to the immigrant. The grandson was mentioned in his maternal grandfather's will so there was no doubt about the connection. As for profiles of people who have no living descendants - should we not remember them too? Some of them did important things even if they died in war at the age of 18 or died single. Following this line of thought is not common on Wikitree so possibly better not to add them.
by Living Baker G2G6 Mach 4 (42.2k points)
selected by Kenneth Evans
Roland, I remember from previous questions, that many people agree with you, that everyone deserves a profile.
We need at least an approximate date correct?  A name alone will not work, we need an estimate of the date and the box for uncertain/estimate needs to be checked.

Then, if you are adding an approximate date, you need to put an explanation of how you got that date.

In Joe's example, there is only a range of dates, how does he decide a date then?
Robert C Anderson has a short section on how they came up with birth dates for children in the great migration period. You can't know the exact date but you can come up with a plausible range. You can often look at the marriage date of the parents for example and fill in the birth order assuming about a 2 year interval and come up with approximate dates. If you have dates for certain children and can bracket a date of a child on either side by +/- 2 years he calls is "about." and if the margin of error is greater he uses "say." If you don't know the order of some children he looks for gaps in the birth order and fills those gaps with the other children. Then take those dates and test them by looking for things that would conflict with those dates such as the birth of their own respective child. This is genealogy by trial and error for lack of a better term. But at the end of the day I think you have to explain the date is unknown in the biography. And then add a range if you know a range. For example it had to be after the marriage date (well you expect so) but before the death of a parent or at least a certain number of years before the child married, etc.You keep back testing your theory and looking for conflicting evidence.

It all sounds very arbitrary but I've used a similar system to find dates for living people based on obituaries and then try to confirm them using public records and in fact this method can be very successful. But you still have to be very clear in the biography that the birth date is unknown.
+7 votes
I'd like to know what the general consensus on this is as well. I personally do not add a profile of a child unless I have at least a decent birth or death date approximate, primarily because it is very easy for someone to create a duplicate if no dates are associated. I would definitely add the children's names into the biography, however.
by Jayme Arrington G2G6 Pilot (180k points)
+5 votes
There was a similar question asked recently (which I can't find) that I think concerned adding profiles for children who died young.

Anyway, I think you shouldn't create a separate profile for an individual where you might only know a name or just that a child existed. Somewhere on the biography of one or both of the parents you could list the children and there you could cite the source for that child, and explain that no more is known about his/her life.

Of course if you do at some point find out more details about their life, it's easy enough to add a separate profile then.

**This applies to older profiles, I think different rules apply if we are talking about more recent time periods**
by John Atkinson G2G6 Pilot (603k points)
I'm chiming in to agree with John!

Under most circumstances, I will only add a profile if I have a birthdate. I don't even like to add someone when I only have a date of death because it seems like searches aren't as accurate when there is no birth date at all.

I agree that the right thing to do is add the names of the children in the biography and explain where you found the names and then add profiles for them later should you find more information.
Just adding another voice of agreement with these two. I add a

== Children ==

section and use the # before each child so they are numbered.

Ideally these are linked to profile pages when a profile is created. But the list is also great when there is not yet a profile.

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