RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Girl Guide on Saturday 03 March 18 13:54 GMT (UK)
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I've just started to do postems on Freebmd and am scratching my chin about a death certificate that I have.
The maximum number of characters allowed on postems is 250. If I were to enter all the info from the 1978 cert I have, I would run out of characters.
What information would Rootschatters regard as most useful from a death certificate of this era?
Can you do two postems for one certificate?
I've just about had enough room to enter info from birth and marriage certs although for some of those I've had to be creative.
Your thoughts on the above would be appreciated.
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I would stick to putting info that can't be gleaned from just the index that could identify relatiobns etc
Age at death
fathers/spouse/informant names
Can't think of anything else at the moment
Hope that helps
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You could abbreviate or omit words. Many of the ones I've put on there have simply been the info, such as:
1/1/1900 London - Joe Bloggs - Boy - son of Joe Bloggs and Jane formerly Smith - Carpenter - etc
under the understanding that most people looking it up would understand the format.
Pretty sure you can do more than one postem for an entry.
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Thanks for your thoughts Wendy and Ayashi.
I guess age/dob, spouse and informant would be useful for anyone. Could start with that and then see how much 'space' is left.
I can't seem to find any means of contacting freebmd to ask about possibly providing more characters (space) to enter information.
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I suppose you have to be careful with more recent certificates as informants could still be living. I know some burial sites obscure this type of information which often includes address.
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Freebmd may only ever go up to 1983, so some informant address details on deaths from this may be out of date now.
I personally though would never post birth cert details for anyone who is still alive.
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Freebmd may only ever go up to 1983
I wonder how many of us on here have our births and marriages on there ;D
I would not post marriage details of anyone likely to still be living either.
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Of what I have done so far the most recent are a 1928 marriage and a 1978 death. I did have a look for the informant from the 1978 death and it appears that she died in 2000.
I guess the best thing would be to apply the 100 year rule to births so anyone born after 1918 will not be added.
For the 1928 marriage I listed both persons are dead one of whom is the 1978 death.
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Rosie - I certainly have my birth on free bmd but not my marriage yet........no doubt it will be added at some point in time.
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Rosie - I certainly have my birth on free bmd but not my marriage yet........no doubt it will be added at some point in time.
Mine are both on there complete with my mothers maiden name ::) ;D
I tend to only post the sort of information on records in the 1900's that I would not mind having disclosed about my close family. If I am not prepared to give similar information on my parents / siblings then I would not do it for those that are not immediate family.
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Yes, you can definitely do more than one postem per entry. I have done dozens for marriages with two postems each. Once or twice I have made an error so as you cannot edit existing postems I have had to add another. I like to put as full information as possible though I only use the essential words with commas as dividers.
Like other posters I do not leave postems for events if there is a possibility those involved may still be living. In the case of more recent deaths eg the last 40 years or so I don't leave postems because of privacy concerns for the living - even causes of death may upset living family members.
But thank you for taking the time to leave a postem. They are so helpful, not just for people researching that particular family but also for those trying to narrow down potential candidates. If we all left postems we would save each other a lot of time and sometimes money.
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Hi Sel
Thank you for your comments. With the one death that I have done so far I didn't put down the cause of death. I' m taking the view that if the interested party really wants more information then they can obtain the certificate.
Good to know that I can do more than one postem. Free bmd could solve that by providing more character space. I was going to write to free bmd to ask if they could expand their character space but couldn't see any means of contacting them, unless I was looking in the wrong place. ::)
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Thank you for your comments. With the one death that I have done so far I didn't put down the cause of death. I' m taking the view that if the interested party really wants more information then they can obtain the certificate.
I agree with you here. :) I consider that a postem is a help to others in eliminating records or giving some information so they know it is the right certificate to purchase. Really 250 characters should be enough to give sufficient info to do this. :-\
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Depends on how many names need to be entered. My death one had three christian names.
It was the marriage ones I was struggling a little with. Perhaps I should leave something out? But not sure what. ??? Witnesses maybe? I wanted to put occupations in as I felt that would be useful for finding people on the census records.
I've also realised from Sel's comments that i should have done the marriage ones twice, once for the bride and once for the groom. Will have to go back and do the other parties. ::)
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Free bmd could solve that by providing more character space. I was going to write to free bmd to ask if they could expand their character space but couldn't see any means of contacting them, unless I was looking in the wrong place. ::)
In order to do that they would probably have to rewrite the entire database?!
I suspect that the answer to your question will be: NO!
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You should have more than enough room with 250 characters. Use abbreviations for example, marriage=m - death=d - born=b - died=d . date of birth = dob. mothers maiden name= mmn. Dates abbreviate.
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Thank you for your comments KGarrad and Silvery.
Perhaps I should have a look at other postems to see what has been entered for those. That should help me to decide what to enter for my postems.
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In general I use the guidelines used by the Scottish record office whether or not to add a postem, which is births older than 100 years, marriages older than 75 years and deaths older than 50 years.
https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/birth-death-and-marriage-records/statutory-registers-of-births-deaths-and-marriages
When I add a postem I normally include all information and only omit/abbreviate/mask info if the people named were not born more than 100 years ago (or I'm unsure).
I try to use a single postem, which may mean abbreviating some bits of information, but I abbreviate the most common words and names first (eg labourer > lab, Great > Gt, Edward > Edw).
I do add postems for deaths less than 50 years old but only where the person was born over 100 years ago. For these I typically omit/abbreviate/mask some information for privacy reasons. I have wondered what issues this may cause for Free UK Genealogy in terms of the Data Protection Act, so I am a bit cautious.
And in case you're not aware, you can simply search postems and only need to enter the date range so you can effectively browse postems to see what info people are including.
https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/ShowPostems.pl
And few of of my own as examples:
Robert Gunn (BMD):
https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=8EHvNZryIVKigKgUrEiDiw&scan=1
https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=QN3hqvh1cwipHfS%2FPh9sRg&scan=1
https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=7Xfhxa4hgv%2F%2FWhb4Ze02UQ&scan=1
Mary Ann Gunn (nee Trundle) (D):
https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=JzalkkX4C%2F0Eh3rTXoW2cA&scan=1
You'll see on Robert's death I've omitted the cause, abbreviated the address' and only used the forename initials of the informant. Whereas on his mother's I've included the full details.
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Thank you for your response Cuffie. Your examples give me an idea of what could be put in postems.
I did have a look at other postems and some of the information on there was not what I would expect to see. Quite a few had nothing to do with any information from the certificate at all. In fact I wondered if the poster even had the certificate from which to post information. ::)
Ah well it was up to the poster to decide what information they wanted to enter.