* Sorting Children

[SpencerDudeUK]

I've seen several posts ref. the sorting of children, but haven't found any to cover sorting when only the baptism date is used. It would seem to me that if the actual birth date is not known, then the software should sort on the baptism date instead? If you have a large family to sort and say one or two only have baptism dates, the 'F9' sort doesn't touch those, and they're still out of order to the rest of the children. This would appear to be normal in other genealogy software I have seen in the past?

[ColeValleyGirl]

I'm guessing you don't have any adult baptisms? Or children baptised twice in different (or the same) churches? Baptism date is often used as a proxy for birth date, but it's often unreliable.

As a workaround for your needs, as long as you're sure the birth and baptism dates are close, could you put in an estimated birth date? (I personally wouldn't do it, but that's me being very stringent -- I won't put anything in my database that I don't have documentary evidence for -- for children for whom I only have baptism dates I sort them manually as best I can).

[SpencerDudeUK]

Yes, that's what I do at present (put a circa date in the birth). It's only that it's somewhat disconcerting when FH doesn't sort them at all if all the children have baptisms only. In the vast majority of cases, families tend to 'christen' their children in the UK when they are babies, so the assumption is exactly the same as putting a guessed date in the birth field. Other genealogy programs appear to do this - just wondered if I could get FH to do the same (for me - not necessarily globally)

[ColeValleyGirl]

No, there isn't a way to get FH to do what you want other than sorting manually.

I do disagree with your statement:

In the vast majority of cases, families tend to 'christen' their children in the UK when they are babies

99% of my ancestors are in the UK. Many of them (as non-conformists) practiced adult baptism; others baptised their children in batches, the date of which could be several years after the birth of the oldest in the batch; others only got baptised as adults when the clergyman who was going to marry them insisted on baptising them first (if there was no proof it had already happened in the 'right' denomination). I'd estimate that less than 1/3 of my ancestors were actually baptised within a few weeks of birth.

[SpencerDudeUK]

Yes, I have a few 'batch' baptisms, etc., but I have to say the vast majority of my FT were christened at less than a year old. It would appear that many were christened at one or two months, or seemingly much quicker if they weren't expected to live (one or two days old in many instances). I agree that it's a little presumptuous to assume a young baptism, it's just that it's annoying when the children don't sort at all on baptism and you have to do it manually - still, I'm not complaining...Family Historian is great, and these are just enquiries as to what is possible to do.
Thanks for your responses - informative as always.

[tatewise]

You could propose sorting based on Estimated Birth Date to Calico Pie via how_to:about#problem_reporting|> Problem Reporting.

The existing Estimated Birth Date feature not only takes into account Birth, Baptism & Christening dates, but also uses the BMD dates of relatives to estimate DoB. This could be used optionally when sorting to overcome the problem you have discovered.

[jimlad68]

Sorry this response a bit late. I give everyone in my database a birth date (or at least a year). If I do not know, an estimate makes things so much more manageable, links the person to a "time period", makes excluding potential "living" easier. An estimate, is just that, it is not incorrect.

In respect of sorting children, if you have some idea of the order of birth, an estimate would sort them accordingly.

[Jane]

Don't forget you can order the Children manually if you want using the curved arrows, or you could write a plugin to take the baptism date into account, if you wanted to, personally I just sort the family manually when I am working on them.

[Gowermick]

Don't forget you can order the Children manually if you want using the curved arrows.

Get in the habit of manually checking the sort order of all children whenever you work on the family, it really is not a burden, is very simple and just takes one or two mouse clicks to correct
With the new GRO indexes giving Mothers Maiden names, I have recently been infilling lots of children who haven’t appeared on Censuses, most of whom needed inserting into correct position.