Dates of B and D are unknown, fact of birth exists --how to guess accurately?

Question

The father of my father's estimated (guessed) DoB can exist only if a wide stretch of error is allowed. This unknown man could have been a school chum, a rapist, a relative of my 16 yr old gm in the area of Karlsruhe in 1906.  How does one create dates that can satisfy the Error Chart's FIX-IT list?  Two people are involved: U-122 and Unknown-322015.

Answer 1

For estimating a father's age it depends on time/society - with no other information to work from about 36 is a probably a good number to start with although I personally avoid creating profiles for people that have virtually no information.

Comments

When entering a person's mere existence (i.e., there was a birth and or a death) W-tree's protocol format requires us to fill in spaces for birth/death. The system makers have decided that minimal knowledge is required, but in some instances, the minimum that's accurate is "inference only." If someone would address that in the protocols, that is a most reasonable approach that represents a forgiving type of accuracy and includes the Unknowns.

Answer 2

Might be best to place the logic into the bio and let future researchers decide...we are not alone!

Answer 3

What gives you an error of "father was dead before birth" seems to be that Unknown-322015 (the son) was born about 1876 and U-122 (the father) died after 1870. The error checker program evidently does not understand the "after". You could avoid getting the error by changing the death year of U-122 to after 1876.

If you don't want to do this, and still don't want to get this error all the time you can always check the box for false error.

Comments

Thank you. I thought I understood your comment, Eva, until I read the entire list of comments. I see different problems now. U 122 could actually have died after insemination but before the child's DOB. I'll need to review this again.

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Of course. All I was saying was that the error checker does not "see" the after. It just compares the birth date of the son with the death date of the father. I think it has a tolerance of father dead one year before birth of child, so you could try after 1875. If you do not think this is an adequate description of this case, just use the box for false error.