Family Historian User Group

On importing my file from RootsMagic I found a large number of empty Death events. This appears to be because RM, in common with some other programs, uses these to distinguish between Living and Non-Living people. It's the same thing as was noted in relation to Legacy in this topic: Import from LFT and Living Flag (13780). However, I'd like to sound a warning, and ask a question.

The warning relates to the use of fhugdownloads:contents:blank_death_finder|> Query:Individual ~ Blank Death Finder. This was very useful in finding over 1700 empty Death events in my file, but it only checks for empty Date and Place fields. Before deleting these events, I fortunately remembered that I have a few Death events which have just a Cause (taken from pre-1837 parish register entries) or just a Note (based on information in a will, where the death itself is still to be found).

This led me to make two modifications to the query as currently available:

(a) Add Columns for Death Cause and Death Note - this enables a visual identification of the relevant entries so that they can be manually excluded from any mass delete operation.

(b) Add the following Rows to the query:
Exclude unless %INDI.DEAT[1].CAUS% is null
Exclude unless %INDI.DEAT[1].NOTE2[1]% is null
This removes the entries altogether from the result set (confirmed by a visual check of the columns).

Would it be helpful for these modifications to be included in the query as currently available?

The question I have is about best practice in dealing with these empty Death events: my inclination is to delete them, but before I do anything drastic, is there any significant drawback to keeping them?

Arthur

That is a good heads up Arthur.

FYI: There is fhugdownloads:contents:query_all_empty_facts|> Query:Fact ~ All Empty Facts that performs a similar blank fact search, but caters for absolutely every subsidiary field possible, and there are many more than Date, Place, Cause, and Note. It is easy to sort into Fact order and select all the Death Events or any other Fact.

So I propose to add a cautionary note to Blank Death Finder and cross-refer to All Empty Facts.

Regarding the blank Death Events, I would be tempted to keep them, since you must have decided that those people have actually died in order to set the RM Non-Living flag. In due course, at least a Date should be added, even if it is only an Estimated, or Before, or After date.

tatewise wrote:FYI: There is fhugdownloads:contents:query_all_empty_facts|> Query:Fact ~ All Empty Facts that performs a similar blank fact search, but caters for absolutely every subsidiary field possible, and there are many more than Date, Place, Cause, and Note. It is easy to sort into Fact order and select all the Death Events or any other Fact.

Thanks - that might be a safer one to use, then. Having just gone to the page, I see I'd already bookmarked it for future reference, so I'm not sure now why I didn't go straight to that one.

Regarding the blank Death Events, I would be tempted to keep them, since you must have decided that those people have actually died in order to set the RM Non-Living flag. In due course, at least a Date should be added, even if it is only an Estimated, or Before, or After date.

I don't think there was any very conscious input on my part, probably something like an automatic tool to set everyone born more than 120(?) years ago as Non-Living. Or it might even be a relic from when I used Legacy before moving to RM.

For myself, I think the complete lack of a death event might be a better reminder to do some research than an empty event, but I'll give it some more thought before actually doing anything.

Arthur