* Lookup Missing Census Facts / BMD Records errors

[tatewise]

Yes Bill, that is where I was browsing for collections, but there seemed no way of entering search filters against a region.
But, I 've found that Location ~ Country and Type filters are supported from main Search screen using the URL format :-
+record_country:United States +record_type:(0)
where the type codes are 0 for Birth/Baptism/Christening, 1 for Marriage, and 2 for Death.
The only snag is no country code for United Kingdom only for England, and Wales, and Scotland separately.
However, Ancestry has similar country codes.
It is only FMP that would have to use united-kingdom for all three.

So I'm thinking of dropping the U. K. Birth/Baptism and U. K. Marriages and U. K. Death/Burial options and splitting into three countries. Does anyone have any opinions?

[BillH]

Mike,

I have no objections, but I haven't used the Lookup Missing BMD Records plugin. Hopefully others will reply.

[AdrianBruce]

You seem to have found most of this by now....

... Then I select a Place such as Canada and then Canada from the sub-list to reveal 5 collections that have few records.
...

As was alluded to elsewhere, I think, the 5 Canada collections pick up data for Canada as a whole, while most of the Canadian BMD collections are specific to a province.

... There is no Scotland Deaths and Burials collection although there is for England and for Wales and even Isle of Man.
...

Blame the Church of Scotland. There were very few burial records kept by the CoS in the first place. What few there are, were ignored by the LDS, I suspect, as they were indexed in the era when the LDS didn't think it important to capture death / burial records. I think comprehensive death records for Scotland exist only for the post-1855 civil registration era only, and those are a/v only via ScotlandsPeople.

... How do you guys cope with this situation?
...

I seem never to go via a collection in the first place - I might use one to thin stuff down after getting lots of data, but I would use the "Restrict records by: Location Type" criteria on the front page. For instance, set Country to Canada and Type to "Birth, Baptism, and Christenings", "Marriage" and "Death".

[tatewise]

I've worked on these two plugins to add FamilySearch.org and MyHeritage.com as lookup sites and improve a few things.
See the following two ATTACHMENTS :-
Lookup Missing Census Facts Plugin Version 4.1.4 Date 03 May 2017
Lookup Missing BMD Records Plugin Version 2.1.1 Date 03 May 2017

The sets of BMD Records to review have split U.K. into England and Scotland and Wales because neither FamilySearch.org nor MyHeritage.com offer U.K. search filters. However, FindMyPast still performs a U.K. search when any of those three countries are chosen, as it does not have country filters.

I have reversed my earlier decision, and changed the Age limit checks to use the median Age derived from the actual or median Date of Birth. For those Census records that exclude children, you can always lower the Minimum Age threshold to ensure people are checked in case they have falsified their age.

When testing MyHeritage.com it seems the Advanced Search page First Name options to Match similar names rarely work well for BMD records. Ancestry seems to have a similar problem. Has anyone else experienced this?

I hope to add some tips to the Plugin Help & Advice regarding refinement of lookup search filters for each web site.

[Attachments deleted]

[BillH]

Mike,

When testing MyHeritage.com it seems the Advanced Search page First Name options to Match similar names rarely work well for BMD records. Ancestry seems to have a similar problem. Has anyone else experienced this?

I use Ancestry quite a bit and have not run into any problems with it being able to find similar names. What are the Advanced Search page First Name options you are referring to in Ancestry? I don't see any options to control the first name on the search forms I use. Is there a different search screen that you are referring to that I don't know about?

[tatewise]

In Ancestry it is the Edit Search for First & Middle Names and its three Exact options.
I am talking about the screen the Lookup Plugins invoke.

[BillH]

OK. I never use any of the "exact" options on the name. As I mentioned earlier, I seem to get similar names just fine.

Here is the search screen for one of the people on my list.

image1.jpg (51.33 KiB) Viewed 13866 times

I notice that you are using the "exact to... > this year" option on the birth year. If you are going to use the "exact" option could you also use the +/- 5 years option? I think requiring the birth year to be exact is too specific and will result in missed opportunities for records that are close. I find a lot of birth records which are off by a year or two at least. I never specify the "exact" option on the year when I'm doing my searches outside the plugin.

Thanks

[tatewise]

I was looking at the Exact options on the Name for when there are too many matching records and the search filter needs to be narrower.

The Lookup Missing BMD Records Plugin has always used Exact to this year when the associated Event has a specific Date, but like you, I do wonder if ±2 or ±5 would be better. The Plugin does use ±1, ±2, ±5, ±10, or disables Exact entirely, when the Event has an estimated date range.

In your experience, which of ±2 or ±5 would be better?

Looking at the code where the rounding-up is calculated, ±5 would be easier.

[BillH]

I personally never use the exact options on the name because I have too many names that are wrong in the records either because the person putting the name down in the record heard it wrong or couldn't spell it or because the name has been mis-transcribed by Ancestry or whomever. For example, even my own Henshaw relatives I've found as Henshaw, Hinshaw, Hanshaw, Handshaw, Hancher, Hincher, Henshawe, Henshew, Hershaw, etc. The same goes for first names. You wouldn't believe how many ways I've seen Permelia documented. I much prefer to just wade through the large number of results or try to pare the list down in other ways. If you were going to use the exact options on names I would make that a option that we can deselect.

I had not run into the use of exact on the date because until just the other day I had never used the BMD version of the plugin, only the census version. Usually what I see is the situation where I know the actual birth date of the person and I have it in FH that way, but in the records it is off by exactly one year. For example, the actual might be 12/1/1937, but the record will have 12/1/1936. It is almost always a year earlier in the records, not a year later. I see this in all kinds of records. I know the actual date because I have the actual birth certificate for the person. I've never figured out why it happens quite often. Once in a while I see the year off by two years. However, in records where it comes from an age rather than an actual date in a form, I've seen it off by quite a bit more than 2 years. So for example, in a death record where the birth date was derived from an age rather than a date it might be off quite a bit. I never use the exact option on dates when I search either, but if I was to recommend something I would recommend using +/- 5 years.

[tatewise]

I was not planning to use the Name Exact filters in the Plugin, but thinking about the Help & Advice for refining filters, where the tips could identify which filters don't always work as expected.

I will go for a minimum ±5 offset for all Dates in next version of Plugin.
(It actually has some side benefits of simplifying the code in several places.)

[BillH]

Mike,

OK... that would be good. Any help for folks so they can tailor the results is good.

Thanks

[tatewise]

See the following two ATTACHMENTS :-
Lookup Missing Census Facts Plugin Version 4.1.5 Date 06 May 2017
Lookup Missing BMD Records Plugin Version 2.1.2 Date 06 May 2017

I have tested the various settings, and the Name, Gender, Year & Place filters for all record collections for each website.
Several minor changes have been made to improve the chances of filters finding a record match.
e.g.
All Individual and Place names have text in [[brackets]] and in "quotes" removed, and also symbols such as ?, *, ^, ", ~, % that have 'special' effects in various websites.
Ancestry Year filters only use ±5 or ±10 offsets, except that in Marriage lookups the Birth Year always uses Broad.
FamilySearch's two Year filters now have a minimum separation of 10 years.
FamilySearch does not use its Gender filter as its Collections are often not coded for Gender.
Otherwise, the Gender filter is now used with Marriage lookups as it seems to help.

With all that testing and experimenting I hope to soon make a start on the KB tips for refining search filters.

[Attachments deleted]

[BillH]

Mike,

In testing these, I think using the +/- 10 years actually hurts for censuses prior to 1850 when no birth date is specified in the records. For example, using Levi Henshaw b. 1815 in Virginia on Ancestry.com, if I click on the line in the output report it finds no matches. If I change the birth date filter to "broad" it find him as the first match. I repeated this same check on several other pre-1850 census entries and got the same results.

Can you make it so it uses "broad" on these pre-1850 USA censuses? Or alternatively, can we have an option to always use "broad" for this filter for all USA censuses?

[tatewise]

The USA Census records 1790 to 1840 & 1890 should not use the Birth or Gender filters with any of the websites.

There is an error in the Plugin profile for 1840 that enables the Birth filter for 1840 and will be corrected in the next version.

Interestingly, it appears to have been that way in the Plugin Store versions for years.

I've also spotted a minor error in the Exclude each person whose missing details are more probably in another country's records ? option for Lookup Missing BMD Records Plugin that will be corrected in next version.

[BillH]

Mike,

Then I wonder what else might have changed because Levi was found in the 1840 census prior to the last version of the plugin which added the +/- 10 year logic.

[tatewise]

In the case of people such as Levi whose Birth Date must be vague to attract the ±10 Years offset, then the introduction of that offset instead of using Broad is the probable explanation. But people with an accurate Birth Date would have attracted a narrow offset for 1840 in previous Plugin versions, and I suspect would have needed to be set Broad to get any results.

Nevertheless, ATTACHMENTS for both Plugins fix the recently mentioned errors.

[ Attachments deleted as now published in Plugin Store in May 2017. ]

[BillH]

Mike,

No... Levi has always had a complete birth date of 14 Jul 1815. This has been in my database for many years so I know that all tests of the plugin have used this date.

Anyway, I'll try these out.

Thanks.

[BillH]

Mike,

This does fix the problem for Levi. It seems to be working well now. I'll report back if I run into anything.

Thanks for all your hard work on this!

[tatewise]

Both the Lookup Missing ... Plugins are now in the Plugin Store and their Help & Advice FAQ section has tips on refining filters for each web site product. Feedback is welcomed on how useful those tips really are.

[BillH]

Mike,

I think the help on refining the searches is valuable. I think folks might not realize that they can even do this which was the case for me. Any hints are good in my opinion.

Again, thanks for all the hard work!

[ruthhenrietta]

I've downloaded the 2 'lookup' plugins, but have no idea how to start using them, and can't find any instructions anywhere. Please could you point me in the direction of instructions / or tell me how to use them, starting with the basics! Thanks, Ruth

[tatewise]

Ruth, I presume you have never used a Plugin before.

Look at the how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers under Plugins that leads to plugins:about|> About Family Historian Plugins.

Also in FH Help > Search Help enter Plugins click List Topics and check the Plugins Dialogue.

Basically, use Tools > Plugins select the plugin and click Run.

For specific details about these two Plugins after running them click their Help & Advice button.
Or you can find that help in plugins:index|> Family Historian Plugins under plugins:help:index|> Plugin Help and Advice.