Admin Q - Best practice for Unknown Death Dates

[Xenofex2]

Just really a basic Admin or Best Practice query that has been niggling me for some while.

Where I never know/could find an approx. death date for an Ancestor, I have always left the date blank within my Family Tree program. (I use Family Tree Maker 2019) This then of course does not help for any potential Reports or even an Ancestor Timeline.

I am therefore curious as what practice others adopt? Leave blank or, say, add 100 years on from birth of the Ancestor and input ‘Before XXXX’? Or?

[GallowayLass]

If I have a rough idea I type ‘abt.’ and the year.
If they are alive on a census but not found anywheres on the next one I type ‘bet.’ and the two years thus bet. 1841 - 1851
If I really have no idea but given by their date of birth, they must be deceased then I type ‘unknown’

All of the above choices make sure that the person is no longer listed as private in any online ancestry tree and ‘unknown’ let’s others see that I haven’t forgotten to enter a fact, I simply don’t know the information.
n.b no quotation marks when typing into FTM on the pc

[GallowayLass]

Admin. Can you please delete two of my three posts? No idea what has happened. I tried to post a while ago and got a fault message. The 2nd attempt said I needed to wait 5 mins before trying again. I forgot about it till now and my post appeared to upload ok but now I see the previous two attempts actually had worked

[Caroline]

Admin. Can you please delete two of my three posts? No idea what has happened. I tried to post a while ago and got a fault message. The 2nd attempt said I needed to wait 5 mins before trying again. I forgot about it till now and my post appeared to upload ok but now I see the previous two attempts actually had worked

Sorted.

[Xenofex2]

Thankyou 'GallowayLass' for your system.

[Darksecretz]

I leave them blank unless I have an idea when the event happened.. then like GallowayLass I'll add Abt. then the date. I do like to 'kill them off' though.

[cbcarolyn]

I do sometime add a date, but in the description add the fact that it is a guess for searching. I have to say I would love a box in any software that lets me tick it to say just a guess.

[Jill on the A272]

I often use Bef. or Aft. and I transcribe a lot of old Sussex wills and some of the beneficiaries are mentioned as widow of, son of my late brother etc (and sometimes I didn't even know there was a brother!) or I put Betw. and the dates if a woman becomes a widow between two censuses.

[Anne in Carlisle]

I do sometime add a date, but in the description add the fact that it is a guess for searching. I have to say I would love a box in any software that lets me tick it to say just a guess.

I do actually have a source I put into my list. It just says 'Guess!' I figured it was on many occasions better than nothing and does show where the 'information' came from. Haha!
Anne

[Xenofex2]

Some interesting suggestions there, thankyou.

[kylejustin]

i don't use any tree software, just ancestry.com, with skeleton trees on FMP and filae (for french ancestors). filae has many ways you can describe your date: on, in, between, before, after, around. i really like it. when it comes to ancestry, i usually make a comment in the box for the event stating why i think/know. mostly i can remember why i think this, but i am finding helpful when not able to look at paper notes.

for example, dead by 1720, deceased on dau's marriage. or died aft 1739, wittnessed dau's marriage. alive 1861, last sighting in census. i usually use these if long periods between records, such as birth records being the last sighting and then wittnessed at a marriage decades later. but sometimes the period is really quite narrow with a common name, so i say dead between nov 1826 (dau's conception) and may 1831 (wife recorded as widow in HER father's will). it also helps with ancestors who died in a city where surviving records are slim, so before 12 may 1719, date of inventory/probate or date guardianship papers written (paris, where parish records burned in 1871, and notary records help reconstruct trees with broad gaps).