Saturday, October 23, 2010

SNGF - People in my database born on 23 October

The Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge this week is to:

1) Is there a person in your genealogy database that has the same birth date that you do? If so, tell us about him or her - what do you know, and how is s/he related to you?


2) For bonus points, how did you determine this? What feature or process did you use in your software to work this problem out? I think the Calendar feature probably does it, but perhaps you have a trick to make this work outside of the calendar function.

Here's my response:
 
1)  No one in my database has my exact birth date of 23 October 1943, besides myself.  I expected that.
 
There are 40 persons in my database with a birth day of 23 October, but none of them are an ancestor of mine.  That really surprised me.  I have 39,500 persons in my database, and of those about 2,100 are direct-line ancestors of mine.  The odds are that 6 or 7 would be born on any specific day of the year.  I have only one - me!
 
Of the 40 with the same birth day, there are only 15 born after 1800, and only one in the 20th century.  Tracey was born 23 October 1979, and is a fifth cousin once removed.
 
2)  How did I do this?  I used Family Tree Maker 16, RootsMagic 4, and Legacy Family Tree 7 to try to figure this out.
 
a)  In Family Tree Maker 16, the only way I could do this was to:
 
*  Create a Custom Report in Reports; then Custom Report; then Contents; then Items to Include (= Name, Birth Date, Death Date); then Individuals to Include (=All).  The report created was 692 pages long.
 
*  Save the report as an RTF file:  Go to File; then Export Report; then To Word Processor (RTF)
 
*  Open my word processor, and go to Edit; then Find and enter "23 October"
 
*  Write down the name and year, click on Next, etc.
 
b)  In RootsMagic 4, the easiest way for me to do this was to:
 
*  Go to Reports; then Lists; then Birthday and Anniversary List;  then Create Report
 
*  Select "Birthdays" and "Everyone" in the database, click on Generate Report.  The report created was in date order, and was 361 pages long.
 
*  Scroll down the report to 23 October, note the names and years, print out two pages.
 
3)  In Legacy Family Tree 7, the easiest way for me to do this was to:
 
*  Go to Reports, then Calendar List Report
 
*  In the Include tab, select "All Individuals, Living or Dead;"  in the Options tab, select "Surname, given Name" and "Birthdays" and "Birth date;" In the Months tab, select "October";  click on "Preview"
 
*  I received a 30 page report for October listed by day of the month, and scrolling down to 23 October resulted in the same individuals as found in the other two programs.
 
I'll leave it to someone else to do Family Tree Maker 2010 and other programs.
 
There may be easier, or faster, ways to do this task, but these were the ones I figured out first!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

In FTM 2011 (and I think 2010 also), you can create a custom report and "filter in" only those individuals with birthdates that "contain" the month of your birth. That narrows the list down substantially.

Incidentally, no one else has my exact birth date either, and only one person in my tree had the same month and day as me. She is also my 5th cousin once removed.

Anonymous said...

Great-aunt Audrey Jones Monk shares my birthday month and day. She was a Army nurse during WWII and served in Europe. At the close of the war, she stayed to help the people coming out of concentration camps.

Sherry - Family Tree Writer said...

Hi Randy! My son shares your birthday! Happy Belated Birthday to you!

Leah Kleylein said...

So fun! I had 9 people in my database of 8009, but no direct ancestors. Thanks for the great idea!