Family Historian User Group

I have more than 1 individual where I enter a new "burial" fact and I do not have the option to enter the age at burial. For other individuals I do. I have attached the fact below and would appreciate any help.

It is not usual to record an Age at Burial.
It is Age at Death that is recorded.

However, on the All tab you can right-click the Burial fact and add Age.

To enable Age in all Burial facts globally, use Tools > Fact Types and Edit the Burial definition.

May be the Individuals that do have an Age at Burial were imported from another product

Thanks Mike worked perfectly and I do not use another product. Love the flexibility of FH.

I 'think' previous versions of FH did have an age at burial entry place. I can remember noticing that it was no longer there but not which version it stopped at. I haven't imported from anywhere else.
Anne

My standard "burial" event includes a place for age. I use it often where parish registers give the age of a person when buried. It gives a fairly good indication of birth date and death date and for pre 1837 it is probably the best information available for those two.
Peter

pwe wrote:My standard "burial" event includes a place for age. I use it often where parish registers give the age of a person when buried. It gives a fairly good indication of birth date and death date and for pre 1837 it is probably the best information available for those two.
Peter

Ah well, that's one illustration (of many) of how different people work differently (and long may FH continue to cater for it...) In my case, if I have a burial date with no death date, then I will estimate a date of death by subtracting an arbitrary number of days (usually 3 for pre-mid 20th century deaths) - and of course I'll mark that death-date with a qualifier of "estimated". I think I've even got a query that I run specifically to check if I've missed any deaths where I have the burial. Just how I work...

Hi Mike, to backup this setting should I use the plugin backup ? thanks Jonathan.

Jonathan, if you are talking about the Tools > Fact Types changed Burial definition, then yes the Backup and Restore FH Settings Plugin will save that and all other customised settings.

Alternatively, you can use File > Import/Export > Export > Fact Set > Standard Fact Set to just save that Fact Set in your Project's Public folder or elsewhere.

My style is similar to Adrian's. If I only have a burial date but not an exact death date, I record an approximate death date based on the burial, typically the same month without the exact date. Age at burial was also a useful indicator for mid-nineteenth century deaths before age at death became available in GRO indexes.

Personally, I think it is vital to record age at burial, as well as age at death. I have a number of examples where they do not tally, particularly in rural areas where literacy levels were low. In those circumstances, one is probably no more reliable than the other, and does give more evidence for supporting a deduced birth date.

As a counter argument: Why are people so focussed on recording "Age at Burial" when the information recorded in Parish/Burial Registers actually records the age the person was believed to be when they died? It's irrelevant whether the deceased was buried on the day they died or at some time (days, weeks or months) after that date; their age can't possibly have changed, even if they would have had a birthday between the day they died and the date their body was interred. The question asked was "How old was the deceased?" and not "How old would they have been had they lived until the date of burial?".

Like others I tend to use approximate death dates where there is no better information available; typically 3 days for adults 1or 2 days for infant or child burials pre-1900. The general rule for most seems to have been wash the body, dress it, bury it as quickly as decently possible (especially in the warmer months). Only when formal funerals had to be arranged was the period between death and burial likely to have been extended.

Mervyn

Indeed - I like to capture as much from sources as possible, as that is the only thing in our databases that is 100% certain. It is absolutely certain that the Parish Register recorded name and age as it does. Going from there to anything else (when they died, when they were born, even exactly which person the entry refers to) is an assumption by the user - sometimes near certain, other times speculative, depending on what other evidence supports the general picture we wish to paint....

I have a case where I had found a death in the GRO index for Q2 1851. I therefore recorded this as the date of death, with the usual awareness that he might actually have died at the end of Q1 1851 if there was a slight delay in registration. I later found a burial record which apparently showed that he had been buried in December 1850! The age recorded in the burial record was right and he was the only one of that age with that name. Hoping he hadn't been buried alive, I gave in and ordered the death certifictate. It turned out that he had indeed died in December 1850 but the death was not registered until June 1851, six months later, after a coroner's inquest.

But the real point of the OP is that his/her burial fact did not offer a place to record age whereas my burial fact and presumably other peoples does have a place to record age. Why would that be?
Peter

Peter, it may be that, as Anne East said in a post earlier in this topic, previous versions of FH had the Age field enabled for burial by default. It is no longer included in the installation settings for the burial fact but perhaps when an upgrade is installed it preserves any previously set Fields Required options.

If it is missing, as Tatewise said it can be enabled using Tools > Fact Types and Edit the Burial definition, ticking the box for Age in the Fields Required.

Peter, the simple answer as I explained to the OP is that your Tools > Fact Types and Burial fact definitions differ.
That is reflected in what is available in a newly added Burial fact.
How such differences may have come about is probably lost in the mists of time.

The other possibility is that the Burial facts already have an Age field value.
That may have been added via the All tab, or via an earlier version of FH that it is suggested did enable the Age field, or the Burial fact was imported from another product with the Age field already set.
In other words, if the Age field has a value then it is visible in the Facts tab for the Burial fact.
Even if you delete the Age number, then the blank Age field still persists until you close FH, which purges blank fields.

So to complete the picture, the Age box is shown in the Facts tab if it is enabled by Tools > Fact Types or the AGE tag has a value. The Tools > Fact Types setting only governs display of the Facts tab Age box not whether the AGE tag is allowed.

Lorna & Mike,
Thanks for that explanation. I see it now, I missed the tick box in the fact edit panel. I looked but I did not see!!!

Peter

Coming late to this, I think it may be that Ancestral Sources populates the age field in the Burial fact which FH then displays whereas entering a burial manually in FH, age isn't an available input in the default view

Yes Stevie, that is another possible way of setting the AGE tag value and reveal the Age box on the Facts tab.