5 Rules to Use When Family Tree Details Are Missing

Wouldn't it be wonderful if every vital record you needed for your family tree was available to you? My tree passed 86,000 people the other day because so many records are available online. But I'm still left without many key facts.

It's so important to have an estimated year of birth when you don't have a documented birth date. Without that estimate, you might attach 20th-century babies to 18th century parents!

When I first began building my tree, I wasn't sure how to handle these missing facts. What should I type into these fields? I couldn't leave a name field blank, or a birth year blank. I needed to develop some rules to cover key facts that were missing.

These rules became second nature to me. They're automatic. I don't have to leave these important fields blank or enter whatever occurs to me at the moment. Here are my 5 rules to use when you're missing critical information for any person in your family tree.

You don't have to leave those undocumented facts blank in your family tree. These 5 genealogy rules will help you avoid errors.

Key Fact #1: Missing Last Name

Use _____ (5 underscores) for the last name. Don't give a woman her husband's last name. That isn't her name, and your family tree shows who she married. Repeating her married name can cause confusion…is that her birth name or not?

Plus, using _____ puts all your missing last names at the top of your family tree's index list to nag at you. (Find me! Find me!)

Key Fact #2: Missing First Name

Use _____ (5 underscores) for the first name. Keep scouring other family members' documents. One of them may have the name you're missing.

Key Fact #3: Missing Year of Birth

Depending on the information you have, you can:

• Match their spouse's year of birth. If you can document their spouse's year of birth, you can assume they were born about the same year—as a placeholder.
• Subtract 25 from eldest known child's year of birth. I use 25 because that's the average age when most of my people became parents.

But ALWAYS prefix the year with Abt. (the common family tree software abbreviation for about) to show you aren't certain. For example, if their spouse's year of birth is 1850, you'd say they were born Abt. 1850.

Key Fact #4: Missing Year of Death

See if any of their descendants' documents refer to this person as being dead. I see tons of Italian vital records that mention a grandfather, and may say he is dead. For example, an 1868 Italian birth record for Angela can state that her father is Giovanni "fu" Antonio. That "fu" means Angela's father's father, Antonio, died before Angela's date of birth.

If you find this, you can state they died before (abbreviated in family tree software as Bef.) the date of the document that mentions them. You may find a census page where the person is missing and it says their spouse is a widow. Or you may find a vital record that says their parents are dead.

If the resulting date tells you they died before they turned 125 or so, don't bother to record it. It's too obvious. The purpose of a "died before" date is to narrow down your search when new documents become available to you. It will also keep you from adding a child to a dead person.

Key Fact #5: Missing Place of Birth

If you have no place of birth for someone, see where their siblings were born. Of course, if you did this with my immediate family, you'd assume I was born in Virginia like my siblings. You'd be wrong. But that's mid-20th-century, and my family moved a ridiculous number of times.

If you have a good amount of data pointing to a particular state or province, you can use that place for the time being. Add a note or let the lack of a specific location say that you need to find documentation.

If you don't feel comfortable committing to a state or province, at least use the family's country. Take a look at the era. Do some historical research on the country at that time. You may be able to assume the family didn't move around.

Let's say there's a family unit in my tree with 4 out of 5 children born in the same town. But I have no document to tell me the middle child's town of birth. I'd feel safe in assuming the middle child was born in the same town as their surrounding siblings. I wouldn't commit to the same street or house number, but the town? Yes, for sure.

It's very rare for a couple to have babies, leave home, have another baby, and then return home and have more babies. Although I have seen it once or twice, it's very unusual.

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What rules do you use to cover missing facts so you can continue building your family tree? Having these placeholders can help you prevent errors and may lead you to the document you need.