Q about IGI dates COMPLETED

[chinakay]

I've seen the answer somewhere, but I can't remember what it was...

Why do some dates in multiple listings differ by exactly a year? Or, something I haven't seen before, one month? It's without a doubt the same person, or the same people marrying, but why the variation? Thanks for any light you can shed on this annoying mystery...

Cheers,
China

[dollylee]

one explaination at:

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,229561.0.html

dollylee

[trish251]

Dollylee's link to the changing calendar could well be the answer you are searching for - I had this clearly described for myself when I found reference to the execution of Charles I in a parish register dated 30 Jan 1648 - when I had always thought this took place in 1649. Modern history seems to have rewritten the dates in our current calendar format.

I have also seen different dates on extracted records where the parish record and the Bishop's Transcripts had different dates (presumably transcription errors). In one case 5 years marriages were simply dated e.g. 1785-1790 in the BT and this was indexed on the IGI with all marriages dated 1785. If you have multiple extracted records with different dates - click on the "film number" to check from where the information was indexed.

Otherwise - I would ask - are you looking at submitted entries? Many of these have dates estimated from census records & could thus be different to parish records. They could also simply be wrong. I have also seen instances where people have estimated a birth date as 1 month prior to a baptism date - this may be a reason for the 1 month difference (again, assuming submitted records).

Trish

[behindthefrogs]

There are also instances where marriages are estimated as the year before the birth of the first child whereas in many cases it was actually only a few months.  This was partly due to the practice in some communities of proving the wife fertile before a marriage took place.

David

[willow154]

Hi China,
Yes, it is frustrating - is it only guesswork!
I have been trying to find an ancestor's birth/baptism for ages. The IGI has birth dates of 'about' 1783 and 'about' 1785.
I have the said person's death certificate and it places the birth in 1785 (I know this could be wrong if the informant did not know for sure). The only other information I can go on is the 1841 census which gives his birth as five years either side of 1791! He's missing on the 1851 census!
So where have these people got their information from? The IGI give inormation that it is taken from endowments of the dead, or baptisms of the dead. I would dearly love to be able to contact these people who have done this reasearch just to know how they deduced this, because I am puzzled  - but I don't think that is possible. (Please tell me if I am wrong).
Sorry to go on, but it's driving me nuts!!
Kind regards,
 Paulene

[downside]

So where have these people got their information from?

Guesswork
Speculation

You have to check whether the person was an LDS member because they seem to be allowed to put any information on the database with the proviso that it is ABOUT such a date.  Many of these researchers from the 1970's are probably now dead so they are not contactable.

You may need to go to a county records office and go through the events yourself if you want reliable information.  Some of the IGI's records are accurate and some are specualtion but always check with the source material at the records office.

[Sylviaann]

I've been trying to research my Jersey, Channel Islands ancestors.  Without going there and looking at the records which are in french anyway it is impossible.

But on the IGI each ancestor has about 10 entries, put on by a member of the church.  When I look at those trees they are mostly the same but some have different ancestors and the dates are definately wrong.  I think the people who put them on guessed that the marriage was a year before a birth and that the parents were born 25 years before the marriage.  This is definately rubbish as I know one ancestor was over 60 when he married!  Needless to say I have given up on this side of the family.

The only way to find the truth is to look at the parish registers.

Sylviaann

[willow154]

Hi Downside and Sylviaann,
I've been to the Society of Genealogists in London and looked at the parish registers and cannot find anything + Staffordshire archives to try to find other information to give clues, but nothing. That's why I wondered if they knew something (perhaps had a family Bible, etc) or had found something I hadn't.
Probably will never know!
Paulene.

[chinakay]

Hi everybody...I suppose the calendar change could account for some of it, that's as good an explantion as any. I also like the other explantions of speculation and guesswork

I see the date variation regularly, but ran into a strange one last night...looking for the marriage of John She[a]rd of Mirfield, the extracted record had him marrying 29 Sept, 1701.

But member submissions included 29 Aug, 1702. That's a double date shift. Confusing.

No, I don't use the member submissions...which incidentally are supposed to be members' ancestors, not just anybody. I think.

Thanks for all your help.
Cheers,
China