Simple Way to Get Date Information

As it turns out, there is no need to keep dates of events consigned to either a paper file or in a document stored for reference. While our own site provides a good reference for those grave markers that say "Joseph Goggins died January 28, 1816, aged 27 years, 2 months and 7 days" on Simply ask Google for simple date questions! This probably works with other search engines as well. Certainly duckduckgo provides the answers, though not quite in as big type at the top of the search. Ditto for Yahoo. Usually a simpler query gets better results than an involved question.

Example 1 includes official census day dates. One obtains the same results from "census day 1790." Apparently Google is smart enough to know that something like "census day 1891" is some sort of British thing, though it doesn't mention that the England and Wales Census was the day before the Canadian version.

Google tells when was census day in 1790

Persons, Places, Dates and Keeping Things Straight

Early on May 3, 2020, Steve inquired, via email:
"I'm looking for some sage (meaning an opinion other than my own) advice
on ... names.  ... Might there be a "Family History Learning Moment" coming up?"

In response, instead of saying "yes, there are many Family History Learning Moments associated with people and place names," Michael Dindinger wrote, on the 3rd of May, 2020 via email, advice on the Names of Persons, Names of Places, and even how Dates work so that people can figure out what is what:

Steve considered this pure gold, so he broke the email down into a four post series, of which this one forms an introduction. Other than the formatting, minimal changes have been made to Michael's thoughts on this important and often misunderstood series of topics, namely how best to record the names of people you are interested in, the places they lived, worked, or visited, and when all the events occurred so that it is understood by future generations. Without futher ado, Heeere's Michael!

Dates in Genealogical Research

Back to the Intro
Back to Names
Back to Places
Dates - This Post

Family History Learning Moment
by Michael W. Dindinger, via email on 3 May 2020




Dates

• The most readable and reliable format for presenting dates is day, month, year; this style is least likely to create confusion when entering, matching, or merging data.
• Some systems abbreviate months as: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec without a period. Enter days with double digits and present four digits for the year. I do not recommend using any abbreviations when possible.

Age and Date Calculator - Now with Day of the Week

I can't recall just how often I see a newspaper article that says something along the line of "Jane Doe passed away peacefully on Wednesday." Or "Jane Doe died on Wednesday, aged 88 years, 8 months and 12 days.

Well, if you keep track of THIS post, simply go to the link below: