A Sanity Check for Your Genealogy Data

Are you confident of the accuracy of your genealogy data? You might be amazed at how many databases I see that include mothers giving birth at the age of eight, marriages at age twelve, or deaths at the age of 135. Sometimes you even find a person with a birth date prior to those of the parents. Download almost any GEDCOM file from the Internet and I suspect you can find similar problems.

Such errors are easy to create. Sometimes selecting the wrong person in original records can cause such errors. Copying someone else's errors can cause other errors. Mistakes also occur because you had a keystroke error when entering the data; attempting to type 1835 on the keyboard can easily result in 1845 being pressed on the keys.

I found such errors in my own database some time ago when I checked. This was embarrassing at the time, but I am very glad that I ran an automated process looking for possible inaccuracies. The sanity check process quickly identified records that I needed to reexamine, records that I might not have noticed otherwise. Luckily, it is easy to check your entire database for obvious errors, whether you have 200 people or 200,000 in your files. For me, the entire process required about two minutes to check the records of nearly 4,000 people.

All of today's better genealogy programs have a "sanity check" report although not all of them use that exact term. It might be called a "Potential Problems Report" or "Problem List" or "Audit Report." Whatever the name, most other high-quality genealogy programs have something that checks for obvious errors, such as recording your father's birth 100 years before his grandmother.

I recently checked someone else's genealogy database with Legacy, a very popular genealogy program for Windows. I received the other database in GEDCOM format.

Note: If you are not familiar with the term GEDCOM, look at my "GEDCOM Explained" article at: http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/08/gedcom-explaine.html.

I first created a new, empty database in Legacy and then imported the GEDCOM file. This created a Legacy database of the other person's genealogy data. Then all I had to do was click on Legacy's Potential Problems report.

A rather large menu appeared, offering many options. I could adjust the number of years in several areas, such as "Warn if born when parents are under 13 years old." I found that I could change the age of 13 to any number I wished. There were similar options for minimum age at marriage, maximum age at death, birth after a certain number of years of marriage, age of mother at time of birth, and more. The same menu also has options for checking for illegal characters in names, situations in which the husband and wife had the same birth surname (not married name) and also to check if the child was born before the marriage of the parents. These last three are simple off/on checkboxes.

I used all the normal defaults and clicked on PREVIEW in order to see the information on the screen. I could have clicked on PRINT if I wished. Less than two minutes later I had a list of potential problems, including one case of a child being born after the death date of the mother. Obviously, the source of that information has to be checked again. The same routine also found two instances of a child being born more than twenty years after the parents' marriage date. Such a late birth certainly is possible, but it is unusual. In such cases, a double-check of the records is advisable.

I would suggest that you run a similar "sanity check" on your genealogy data. It is very easy to accomplish. It only takes a few minutes and might save you a lot of embarrassment in future years.

Have you performed a sanity check on your genealogy information?

Comments

[theKiwi]

I've found that Genealogica Grafica runs an incredible "sanity" check on a GEDCOM file - apart from looking at the "usual" things like age at marriage, age at birth of a child etc, it looks at how events "relate" to each other - so can alert if a woman gave birth less than 9 months after another birth, can alert if marriages are out of order in the file, if children are out of order, offers up possible duplicates, identifies sub-groups within your file- ie groups of people not connected to the main group of people in your file etc etc. Here's such a report from a GEDCOM out of my database before I had a major cleanup

http://roger.lisaandroger.com/GedcomErrors.htm

Genealogica Grafica is available from

http://home.versatel.nl/genealogicagrafica/

Cheers

Roger

[Israel Pickholtz]

Thanks for the reminder. My Brothers' Keeper 5.2 for DOS has such a feature, with adjustable parameters, but I haven't run it in years. I'll have to put it on my list of things to do.

[Bev Anderson]

My Reunion 7 (Mac iBook 9.2) was pre-set for checking the age of the mother, children born before a wedding date, checking people who died over age 100, et cetera. It has saved me tons of errors at the initial data entry point. Yes, I still do typos and errors, just not as many as I would have without that feature.

Since I do so much research in Norwegian records, the second record to check for after the birth/baptism record is the confirmation record, so I learned to have a handy little pocket calculator at my side to add 15 (normal age of confirmation) to the birth year to calculate what year to check for the confirmation records. If I don't find them confirmed between 14-18, I start looking for death records prior to the age of 15. The other project I had to calculate was the years of birth for my maternal gr-gr-grandparents' many children which necessitated comparing census records, when each child appeared in census data first, their ages, comparing that against the death certificates, etc., and I think I finally got them all straightened out; the reason for the checking was the fact that the courthouse burned down and all those records, as well as my gr-grandparents' marriage record, all went up in smoke. For whatever reason the couple had filed a notice of intent to marry in a different town, so that at least gives me a rough idea for when they married, and that ties in nicely with the birth of their first child. I'm on my second or third pocket calculator because I use it practically daily, even checking numbers I can do in my head in case my brain is fuzzy at 2-3 a.m. when I'm half asleep. That's saved me a few more embarrassing errors and typos.

I dang near break out in hives and come down with a case of ulcers if I'm cornered into using someone else's data without physically seeing copies of documents (some people mean well, but they're scatterbrained, so not the most reliable researchers); I've learned to be pretty well fanatical about documents. Sometimes documents have errors, too, but at least I can track them and analyze why the errors are there and make notes accordingly. Using someone else's figures without backup documents is nerve-wracking. Luckily, I don't have to do that very often. Normally when some generous soul voluntarily sends me data I end up getting the original documents so I know what I'm doing.

I'm trying so very, very hard to make sure my records are as correct as humanly possible, so I do any bit of checking, proof-reading, and editing I can do before I publish it (the only things I can't edit properly, of course, are things like newspaper articles, letters, etc., where I have to copy errors as written).

A program to check for errors sounds great if a genealogy program doesn't already have it.

Best Wishes,
Bev

[Dae Powell]

Several other Genealogy Programs have these checks built in, too. It is an excellent idea to run the sanity check, which I do annually. I keep the reports and compare them to the others to see if there are error patterns that correlate with the sources I've used.

Always good to implement Quality Control.

Happy Dae·
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[Gwen McCullagh]

With checking capability so readily available I have to wonder why Ancestry.com permits family trees rampant with such errors to be uploaded ? The prevalence of obvious errors, lack of sources and source references given as other equally flawed trees negates most of the benefit from the availability of this "resource"

[Harvey Nyman]

I use Family Historian for my records and checks can be run using a "custom query". Three useful downloads from the user group - www.fhug/org.uk - are:

Downloads Check Birth Dates

Description: Lists mothers who give birth before the age of 16 or after the age of 50 and parents (of either sex) whose children are born after their death.

This can be used to check for potential discrepancies in data.Downloads Married Too Young

Description: Produces a list of individuals who were married before the age of 16. This can be used to check for potential discrepancies in data.Downloads Born Too Late
Posted in Downloads: Queries on 06/01/07 at 12:50:13 GMT+02:00 by Mamine
Description: Produces a list of women who give birth after the age of 50. This can be used to check for potential problems in data.

[Cathy]

Another one to check for is a child being born more than 9 months after the death of the father. I had my great grandfather being born 15 months after his father died. I assumed that one of my dates was off by a year. They weren't - I had uncovered an old family secret!

[Sandy Coulter]

I've been very disappointed that Family Tree Maker 2008, the software I use, no longer has the Data Errors Report. I can't imagine why they discontinued it.

[HilltownRoots]

Another common error of logic I see quite often in posted trees is an entry for individual births, marriages, deaths, etc. in some town of the Colonies before 1620. "John Doe, born 1599, Boston, Massachusetts" for example. Or attributing a city mentioned in a source as being in England, to a city of the same name in the New World. "Born Cambridge, England" becomes "Born Cambridge, Massachusetts." Then everyone copies that tree and the error proliferates. With it showing up in so many posted trees, it must be so . . .

[Donde Smith]

I love Reunion for Mac (I'm using v. 9: it's always a worthwhile upgrade). In addition to all the automatic checks you can set to have it run as you enter data as Bev mentioned, it will also "find" unlinked people and unlinked sources. Great for cleanup.

[Robert E. L. Ingram]

Another factor that arises when a reputed parent is much older than 100! There are probably two or more generations missing!

[David Grier]

I think some "obvious" errors can arise from the GEDOM transfer process itself. After upgrading my Family Tree Maker .ftw file to the newly installed Family Tree Maker 2009 (.ftm) file, I discovered SCORES of people were now listed as having born, married, and/or died in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia -- these people being those (a) who could never have been there and never came to the "New World" or (b) lived long (e.g. 1675) before Lunenburg, N.S. was settled in 1753. I can't fix this with a "global search and replace" operation because 100 or more of the people in my file are correctly located in Lunenburg. So I'm reduced to fixing the erroneous entries one by one! Unless someone has a better idea?....

[Marilyn]

PAF has an automatic notice that pops up when data seems to be inaccurate, like births too close together, before marriage date, mother or father too old, late marriage, etc. It keeps the typos down. I have only imported another's GEDCOM once into my database, after confirming it's accuracy. I prefer to make my own mistakes, thank you!

[Paula]

I agree with Sandy Coulter re FTM 2008/2009 - what is provided is a "Dialog Box" warning you of date, age, marriage, etc. errors, during your current data entry. This is of no use for data previously entered. An error report would be great!

As hard as we try, it is doubtful that anyone can produce a genealogical report or book without errors.

This is why an attempt should be made to verify information and to always cite the source, which we all do, right?

And even then, the information may be incorrect – census records are one example, others are recorded by: Clerks of Court; ministers who perform marriages; close relatives who prepare obituaries or eulogies, and the list goes on.

I share my information and attach the following DISCLAIMER, which makes me feel better about sharing it!

"AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE ABOUT THIS REPORT

"This report was produced from Family Tree Maker 2008/2009. All information in this report was obtained from family records, official documents, public sources, free and paid online databases, interviews, published sources, and other genealogists and family historians. Sources are on file. This document was prepared with due diligence; however, errors and omissions may exist."

"Genealogy reports are never complete, and they are never totally accurate. If you see any errors or have anything to add, please write to me at: (e-mail address) or the snail address below."

[Chris]

While this is a very important thing to do, remember that we are dealing with historical records, and what we consider 'normal' today was not necessarily so in the past. For instance, in the 13th Century in England the age of consent was 12, and was only raised to 13 in the 19th Century. Before 1929, the minimum legal age for marriage was 14 for males and 12 for females. Remember to check the historical context before dismissing information as incorrect.

[Robert]

Just to prove how important this is...My grandmother was sent a copy of a family history someone had produced. According to the history my grandmother was dead! Sending mail to a dead person huh? If I had produced this I would have been mortified.