Why won’t people guess a location? [closed]

Question

Please take a risk and hazard a guess at a vague birth location    like a state and/or country and mark it uncertain if you know the parents’ marriage location and an early census. Similarly, guess a death location and mark it uncertain if you know where someone is buried. It might give someone a clue when adding or looking for connections for other family members.

Comments

Exactly.  You can always change it if further research shows a different place.  But in the meantime, it would help others ENORMOUSLY if you would guesstimate.

If a person was married in Connecticut, USA, and died in Connecticut, USA - please at least put "USA" in the birth location field.  It would help those of us in other countries who get dispirited at clicking through to a profile, only to find it is not what they are searching for.

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A guess is a terrible thing to add without proof. You should know how it goes by now. Genealogies without proof are mythologies and they can run wild on the internet.

There are some things that you can talk about in notes, but you should know better than to add anything like that into fields because people will think that is done deal and that there is proof behind it somewhere. Especially if you are unfamiliar with a family or region.

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That is why there are radio buttons labelled 'uncertain' and templates like {{Estimated Date}}.  You are assuming that all profiles on WikiTree are finished works of art.  Most (if not all) are works in progress.  And works-in-progress start with suppositions, which lead to the researcher looking for sources to prove their suppositions.  That is the research process.

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I am most certainly not assuming that.  I am talking about holding ourselves to higher standards than flitting about adding things to fields that can harm the process.

When you have an unknown you don't come up with one out of thin air, with no proof.

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Thanks, Ros. That’s the point I was making, especially if their parents were born and died there. Dina, I understand what you are saying and there are too many unsourced, therefore “mythical” people in our tree. I’m talking about where there are directly stated or circumstantial sources already on a profile, not making wild guesses.

Answer 1

Part of the problem we're working on is that in the past people have made all sorts of guesses, especially about dates and locations. At sometime the "this is a guess" part has disappeared leaving assertions. It's amazing how many locations for medieval marriages Wikitree has. If people are reluctant to guess that is surely a good sign.

Comments

I don’t see medieval marriages as an issue - few members are pre-1500 certified. What frustrates me, is when the profile clearly states where the person is buried (with a source) but the death location is blank. It is quite rare for someone to be buried far from their death place, and extremely rare for it to be in another country.

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In the case of my second great grandmother, the last record I have of her was that she was living in Buffalo, New York with her son. But she was buried in Niagara Falls, Ontario beside my second great grandfather. And he was recorded as being in England during the 1911 census, yet after he died in 1915, he was buried in Niagara Falls. So I have no idea where either one actually died.

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Perhaps it's a matter of class and money. Diana Princess of Wales died in Paris.

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Greg, those places are close. I see the problem, but that could be covered in the profile if Niagara Falls, Ontario were marked as uncertain. I doubt your second great grandfather died in England though and had his body shipped back across the Atlantic. At least it would be clear that he didn’t die in Australia, South Africa or India (or somewhere else that a blank location suggests.) Someone could find his Niagara burial record which could lead to a death certificate.

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C. Mackinnon, I agree. I have an 1870s profile of a reasonably wealthy woman who died in New Zealand and who was supposedly buried with her parents in England. I can find no proof so I’m very sceptical as it would be the only case I’ve ever heard of.

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Yes, they are close, but they're still in separate jurisdictions, and even separate countries, so making a guess in this case would be at least 50% likely wrong. (Maybe more than 50%, because I have also seen her with her daughter in Vancouver in one census, and, at the time, my great-grandfather was living in New Liskeard, Ontario, so there are more than just two options for her to have been when she died: not just where her various children were living at the time, but also all the places that are en route between those places.) Until I find an actual death record, or at least an obituary, putting in a guess would be irresponsible, because however much I hedged it around, somebody would take it as fact, and pass it on as such.

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I'm currently researching a family that moved back and forth across the USA/Canadian border so much any guesses would likely be wrong. I also know of a couple cases (late 1800s) where USA might be correct but a burial in Connecticut would lead one to believe he died there but it was actually Louisiana. Also have a few relatives who died while visiting in Canada but were buried in the USA. If there is supposition, it should be called out in a == Research Notes == section.

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One lot of my direct ancestors moved back and forth between Queensland and New South Wales so frequently it was a nightmare tracking down the birthplaces for their children.  Family records named the children, but not where each was born (or died for those who didn't survive infancy).  I could guesstimate, but that would lead to errors for the future.

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Doug, USA is better than nothing at all. As someone not used to physical borders, I can understand your’s and Greg’s comments. I bet those are few and far between, just like a memorial stone in New Zealand which mentions a husband - who actually died in the UK. It was a lack of a death record which made me look elsewhere. Melanie, though it may not be historically correct, you could categorically say Australia.

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Fiona, border crossing was (and is) very frequent. There weren't border crossing stations before the Treaty of 1908. There are still communities that are in both countries. Some parts of the border changed over time as disputes were settled. In any case, it was not uncommon and since it wasn't usually very far, bodies did get shipped back home for burial. Then, saying USA (or Canada) isn't very useful either since they are geographically pretty large and every state/province has their own rules for vital records. Using just the country with a guess would not be helpful. I guess putting USA would narrow it down to just 50 states plus some territories to search in. Another example is my wife's ancestors. They moved to the frontier regularly. Knowing they lived in Wisconsin would not lead to finding their deaths in Colorado. Before Wisconsin the family was in Illinois for a few years and before that in New York and before that in Vermont. That type of migration was pretty common, especially when the gold rushes occurred.

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Doug, I can’t understand how a burial place marked uncertain  wouldn’t give valid hints to death place that another researcher could potentially follow up. I see numerous sourced burial places in profiles without a death location. It seems strangely unhelpful. I’ve closed the question, as there seem few people who see this as an issue.

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Since there isn't a burial field to mark uncertain, you have to fake it on the death location. An example. My mother was buried in Massachusetts but her death record is in Maine. Without other clues, the death record wouldn't be found. If there is a source that gives some vague reference to the death location, perhaps just a state, then an uncertain location is useful. In a more isolated country like New Zealand, a guess is probably more likely, but consider that the country of New Zealand is roughly the same size of the single state I live in (Colorado). 

I also see Europe as having the same problem. The distances to other countries is not that great and people living anywhere near the borders will likely have the same problems even if it is marked uncertain. Most people don't pay much attention to that indicator and to me it becomes a violation of the Genealogist’s Code of Ethics. 

Putting speculation in the == Research Notes == section and calling it out as that would be fine.

Answer 2

I said it already and I will say it again: In the town of my ancestors there are all kinds of different nationalities, even in the 1700s and 1800s, because it is located on a very important trade street. And many of the names of the people were germanized by the local people so you cannot easily identify if this guy is a Swede or that gal came from Italy. Sometimes there are remarks in the church book entries that are transcribed, but often there is no location mentioned. And no, because of all this I will NOT guess any birth location when there is no birth location written.

Comments

But if they are in the local cemetery or in the church book as a burial, the place of death is likely to be close by. I’m not suggesting that anyone guess a location without a reasonable clue. There are thousands of profiles without locations added when it is reasonably clear where an event happened by the source. e.g. an English death record suggests someone died in England.

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Did I talk about death places? No I only talked about birth places. I regularily look if there is a burial place mentioned because at that time people lived and died where they were buried, no matter if they were born only 5 km away.

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Jelena, the point I wanted to make is that so often the sources quoted imply where events took place, but PMs won’t even add the country. (I’ve just added some death places on profiles with blank based on cemetery records.) I am not suggesting guessing a birthplace where there is no information at all.

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You wrote in your opening post: 

"Please take a risk and hazard a guess at a vague birth location    like a state and/or country and mark it uncertain"

Don't say you didn't talk about birth places. Yes you wrote the if afterwards, but you did not only talk about death places. 

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We buried mother-in-law's ashes 300 miles from where she died. Father-in-law is buried in a village where many people have the same LNAB and have lived there for generations. It might be reasonable to assume that he too was born there. He had no familial relationship to any of them but lies among them.

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There are also more and more anonymous graves coming. A neighbour lived here for far more than 40 years, but he wasn't buried in our local cemetery but anonymously somewhere in a forest. Those are quite recent developments though. 

But usually people were in the 1700s and 1800s buried where they died. I have one relative though (an immigrant of France), who was on tour when he died and he was transported about 300km back home to be buried in the town he had called his home.

Answer 3

I totally agree. As a practical example, after getting frustrated (as Ros notes) with clicking through onto too many irrelevant and/or unsourced profiles in a search, I decided to go through my own watchlist to assign everyone at least one place of birth or death. In many cases that was just a country, not a county or parish.

I only found three people for whom I could not make an evidence-informed assumption about country of birth or country of death. Two were from a family that lived in Calais, returned to England on the fall of Calais in 1558, and then a large chunk of the family moved to Ulster in the 1610s (and some of them went back and forward between England and Ireland over the following years). The two 'place unknowns' were of an estimated age that meant they could have been born in France or England, and could have died in England or Ireland. The third person was someone of an ethnically German name who was married and had children in London, but no records found for a baptism or burial in England.

For everyone else, a country of (usually) birth or (sometimes) death could be reasonably inferred from other sources. I was conservative about assuming a county or parish for the better-off families as many of them moved between London and one or more country estates.

I acknowledge that this might be less true for immigrants, but in almost all of those cases a country of death should be able to be inferred?

Comments

Thanks, Suzanne. Admittedly, there will always be the curly ones, but they are few and far between in my experience. I think it is better to have the occasional ‘uncertain’ error than hundreds of blank locations.

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Evidence informed, and presumably explained in the bio, being the key.

Answer 4

While I value everyone's opinion here, I'm going to go out and dissent a little.  Even if you disagree with my position, I hope that you'll at least consider it.

A location should never be entered as a wild guess.  Or any other data field on a profile.

While it may help some people find a record if it is correct, it will exclude a record if it is not correct.

Marking a location purely because someone lived in one country is not genealogy and is harmful to later research.  There is an example above that if someone is married in Connecticut and died there we should assume they were born there and mark it as born in the USA.  What if the person was born in England and migrated?  If someone is looking for a record of this same name born in England, married and died in Connecticut, having a "born in USA" may exclude this profile from their search.

Aside from a wild guess, it is appropriate to make an educated hypothesis - if you have additional evidence - and then put the location that you can reasonably assume was correct.  And then of course, mark it uncertain and annotate it in the bio.

For example, in the above Connecticut example, if the mother and father were born in the USA, then for sure, it is most likely that the person was also born in the USA.  I'd enter USA and mark it uncertain.  Or, if an older sibling was born in the USA this would be good evidence that this person was also born in the USA because people rarely migrate, have a kid, migrate back, have a kid, and then return to the destination country.

And this is very important and most people don't take the time: annotate it in the biography.  Something like, "Joe was born in 1884.  While no birth record has been found, his parents were born Connecticut, Joe was married and later died there so it could be assumed that he was born in Connecticut."

If the location was more likely than not, I'd record it.  But just hazarding a guess to put something in the box is harmful to genealogy and fosters the climate of fantasy genealogy that is so prevalent at Ancestry.com and other unsourced tree sites.  

The problem compounds when the next researcher then makes a guess in another part of the profile, and the next makes yet another guess.  In time (over 5, 10, 20 years), you have a complete fantasy file that will then be copied and pasted across the net and then GEDCOM uploaded back as further validation of the erroneous entry (or entries).  And this is because everyone assumes that the last person has a record or heard a story from Grandma Milly.  When you put in a wild guess, it weakens the strength of the historical record for the profile and the whole family.  Remember the game telephone when you were a kid?  One kid says a sentence and whispers to another and the sentence goes around the room an when it returns it is wildly different.  Genealogy works the same way, just slower.  Today's guess, plus a guess in 10 years, plus a guess in 20 years = a completely different profile.

Bottom line: don't enter wild guesses.  Only enter reasonable estimates that can be justified with logic and reason.  And always annotate the details in the biography.

Edit: spelling error/typo

Comments

And that was the original stance.

If there is a source in the bio, put a location in the datafields. Use your brain cells.

Not 'take a wild guess'.

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And if you put 'USA' and it turned out to be 'England' - c'est la vie. Shrug and change it.

If it was 'England', but you had left it blank, you are frustrating/dispiriting countless researchers.

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Erm.... to "hazard a guess" is not "take a wild guess"? Ok.... I understand it as "take a wild guess", but maybe this is just because I understand "to hazard" as "to risk doing something that would put something or someone at risk" (one definition in the Cambridge dictionary).

With hazarding you put good research imo at risk, because the third, forth, zillionth researcher doesn't get that the location was a "guess hazarded", but takes it as given. Search machines also don't get the "uncertain" radio button. So it is imo really better to leave it blank than to take a wild guess.

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SJ, that is my point. I am suggesting reasonable estimates, not wild guesses. These are profiles where there are sources. I think the issue is that PMs think they need to be exact. e.g. Los Angeles, California, rather than California or USA. The biggest bugbear as Ros has noted is that if you are looking to connect up families or if there are duplicates, it’s nearly impossible to find people, especially if they have common names.

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Ros, I wish I could have given you “Best Answer”.

Answer 5

There are three options, right? 1. Make a reasonable, supported conjecture (not guess) about a life event location (or date, for that matter). 2. Create the profile but leave fields blank if there is no source to support the fact to be entered into the field. 3. Don't create the profile until there is a source for date and location of at least one (BMD) life event. When I joined Wikitree eight years ago, I was advised to follow the third path, and I have generally continued to do so, with a dose of the first if I have sources to make reasonable, supported conjectures with the reasoning explained in the bio. 

Yes, we always have to test our facts and be willing to change them if there is better later found source(s), but "guessing" as to a fact and "shrugging" if  we have to change it? Not sound genealogy.  Your own private tree that you keep somewhere else and you want to record guesses? Up to you. But "guessing" and "shrugging" is not healthy for the Wikitree, IMO. There will be a reckoning, and it is only a question of how many profiles were impacted (which may not even be known) by the "guessed" information.   

And the example above, where older and younger siblings were born in the United States, so guess that the middle sibling was, too? I had exactly that situation, except the middle sibling was born in the "old country". The family had returned for an extended visit (probably to settle the affairs of the parents who had remained in the old country) and the child was born in Polish Russia, and this was in 1907 when one might suppose families didn't return to the home country. 

Comments

Hi Ellen, thanks for posting your answer.  I'm replying solely to the line below as I agree with the rest of your post.

You wrote:

When I joined Wikitree eight years ago, I was advised to follow the third path...

I'm not sure who said that choice #3 was best.  Choice #2 works just fine - as long as you only enter what is known.

For example, I was working on a mid 17th century English profiles.  I have the name of the husband and wife.  Not much is known about the wife other than her name, marriage date, and the birth of her children.  In the marriage record it is recorded her maiden name and her father's given name.  

Should I create a profile for the father?  The ONLY data I have are his first and surname.  But having the father's profile might help others who have more data locate this family.

For me, I would create the father's profile and enter his first name, surname, and I would estimate a birth date of 20 years prior to his daughter's birth and mark it "before this date."  And then I would mark the profile with the template {{Estimated Date}} and I would annotate that he was likely born before this date based on the birth date of his only known child.  Other than that, I wouldn't enter much else.  We don't know if he was born in England.  Maybe he was a French Huguenot and Anglicized his name on arrival.  Or maybe he was a Palatine German and did the same.  He could be an Irish or a Scottish immigrant as well.  

But I think that having a profile, even if nothing is known but the first name, is a good idea because it can help another researcher to exclude a family or include them as a possibility in their search.

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Having a profile with an estimated date guess, this is what I do. And I write in the notes: "birthyear estimated based on birthdate of child" or "...based on marriage date" or whatever is the foundation of my guess. And nothing else than this guessed date is entered.

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You might as well not bother.  Anybody who uses your stuff will just take the dates and ignore the comments.

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Thanks for your wise comment, Ellen. I tend to use Number 3 if I am adding a spouse and can’t find a death. I’d like PMs to be bold and add something in those location fields when they have provided a clear source. A baptism is a clear guide to a birthplace; a burial is a guide to a death place. Occasionally it may be incorrect, but as others have noted it is more likely to be correct.