General Chat

I check for new additions to two surnames every day.

I have just realised that for quite some time none have any place of birth. I tried a 14 day search and the same so tried a 14 day search for a common name and there are some with a place of birth. There has always been a problem with people not adding a place of birth but sure it is much more common now.

Any reason?

MB

if you mean you are looking for names that people have added to their trees ...................


it is entirely up to the tree owner the information that they put on their tree.

so no accounting for taste!

it might be that they don't actually know the place of birth ............

........... or are they all copying one from the other? :-)

the latter is becoming more and more common ............ copying blindly, without doing any checking or their own research.


I call it lazy researching :-)



If you are searching for the place of birth, as against just noticing what is happening ................. have you checked any of the records for the birth registrations if they were after July 1 1837 in England and Wales or 1855 in Scotland.


If so, try going to www.freebmd.org to check .......... at least the registration district will give you an idea of the region.


that's a free site ........ and excellent

I have noticed it a lot recently with new members.....and most know where the people were born, including themselves

Maybe the box for place of birth is'nt very clear......I have not added anything to my little tree on here for a couple years so I dont know if that is the case

I just searched for myself..... There are three trees

One belongs to my ex husband he has my place of birth wrong.... We were both born in the same hospital.... This tree is about 7 years old

The other two belong to my daughter.... She has the year either side of my correct birth year and no she has no place of birth either.... They are fairly new trees

Oh and all three trees there was a different spelling for my first name in each....very slap dash I must say :-D

I wonder if there is too much emphasis on entering a date and not enough on place?

Or no encouragement to enter as much as you know so if you only county or country then enter that rather than leaving blank.

I know I get some vague ones added to my tree through import of my GEDCOM but I do try to eliminate them. I don't think the newer users will be using a GEDCOM, they are more likely to adding manually.

what qualifies as a place of birth?

hospital?
home address?
town,?
city?
county?
country?

place of registration?

There's always the fall back of N/K - not known!

But what I have seen especially on the living relatives board are people looking for a person, will mention where and when born....Then when you search the trees for them to see if they are in any others, they haven't bothered to enter a birth place in their own tree

Then you have the age of problem of area names

IE Battersea SW London
Used to be Battersea Surrey

Now a Londoner will probably put in London, but someone not from London would probably put in Surrey (where it used to be)

So you put in John Bloggs Born 1899 Battersea London

But in my tree he is listed as John Bloggs Born 1899 Battersea Surrey

No match will come up

A dilemma

Just had the thought - the people from abroad who will just put in either London or Surrey and no location........

Place of birth names can vary wildly and still all be accurate, depending on the source. I have two branches from south-east Northumberland, for which the registration place for births is always Tynemouth. However the censuses may well say Blyth, Cowpen or other districts, and other sources such as baptism may be in another named place altogether so it is reckless to dismiss a possible just on the ground of place of birth.

And the other horror is Ancestry's default to America addresses when not given a country, lots of identical town names there!

Born in Richmond UK

springs to mind as one place name in the UK which has been used all over.

I know well that the description of a place of birth can vary - as you find when doing searches on the 'improved' Find My Past and Ancestry.

I was asking about place of birth being completely blank.

There are often doubts about where someone was born but I was using enter at least the county but if necessary just 'England' or 'Wales'

Did you read my replies.... Where I have stated I have seen it a lot recently

Just added a person to my tree.... And it does not ask for place of birth until it is actually on the tree..... Then when the next screen comes up you would have to scroll down the page to add place of birth..... So I would say newbies are missing that part


I reckon ths started in 2012 when they changed the tree format as I do not remember it being like that when I did add people to my tree for those few weeks

I think you are right Jax, the old tree required a place of birth.

That could explain it, I have always input my tree from a GEDCOM so not noticed that.

I was just checking my surname, it is usually quiet with only the odd new entry. Today there are five screens of new additions but most have no place of birth. Many don't even have a date of birth. A few don't have first name, place of birth or date of birth. Makes you wonder why people bother!

You can't add information you haven't got, you have to build trees by gradually adding information. For example you pick up from one source the names of their children, no other information - you add them to your tree and hope that further complementary information will turn up which you can add.