I found a baptism record (yr 1729) that states: NAME born: ABC, baptism date, at XYZ.
I create birth with ABC as place, leave everything else empty
Then create baptism with date and XYZ as place.
After this all age calculations return ‘unknown’. I know it would calculate when only baptism is present, but would rather not omit the birthplace. We can’t be sure on which date the person was born, anything from the day of the baptism back to many years sometimes. Simply stating ‘before’ just doesn’t feel right. What are your ideas?
Gramps uses baptism date as a fallback when birth date is missing.
If you want to add birth event to have the location, use the baptism date, age calculations will then be the same as not having a birth event. Eventually add a tag to the birth event to indicate, that the birth date is actually the baptism date.
On another thought, since Gramps allow birth event without a date, the age calculation method should treat a birth event without a date the same as no birth event and fallback to the baptism event date (if exists) in stead of returning ‘unknown’.
In those circumstances I use the “bef” (eg bef 1792) for the date of
birth which then identifies it as not known but the benefit I have is I
do not use age calculations at all.
Also I would not make the birth place the same as the baptism place in
some areas there was a tradition of the mother returning to family roots
(ie her mother) to give birth and then having the baptism done when
returning to their normal abode.
phil
Yes, that’s what I originally thought would happen
using before would assume the person wasn’t born on the day it was born (Which is known to happen). In this case the couple lived in a village without a church and had their child baptised in the most nearby church.
But dating (I sometimes check ages to see if I haven’t done anything outrageous) has its merrits.
I can only speak about Denmark in the 16th and 17th centuries, but I assume that conditions were similar in many other countries. At that time many newborn died shortly after their birth. Therefore it was very common to have the newborn child baptised immediately at home, and then maybe a month later (if the child still lived) have the baptism publicated in the church. So for children born in these centuries date of birth and date of baptism is typically very close.
Thanks.
As far as I’m aware of emergency baptisms (as they called home baptisms) were quite rare with protestantism. Which is the majority of my research. Burial of unnamed children (that is those who weren’t baptised) wasn’t uncommon. “Buried a child of John’
One reason for different dates was forced by frequent floodings, when a church went isolated. They often stood on higher ground and became surrounded by the water. Sometimes when they could people went to an other church nearby or just waited for water to drop. (or rented a boat).
I wouldn’t like to assume a birth date close to baptism (even though this is the case in majority)
I am guessing finding baptism records is more common than finding a birth record for a majority of early records. I would add either a note about the birth place in the baptism record or add “Born in…” to its Description field. Adding it to a note allows creating it as a link back to the place record.
Additional info…
Using the note method allows you to share the note for others with the same scenario. There is a negative; by using the note method is that many reports do not support event notes.
Assume the most dangerous word in the English language. Often defined by
the saying “make an ass out of you and me”
If the only evidence you have of a birth is a baptism then the only
evidence you can use in a birth event, is that the date was before the
baptism date or in some rare cases on the date of baptism
(mathematically <=), and you cannot enter a place, because you have no
supporting evidence.
phil
I do have the place, since it was recorded and was different to that of the baptism. If you don’t trust that you can’t also trust the baptism, because that’s the same source. And often the only source.
Just had an inspiration. Create a custom event “Born in” to hold the place information. Place it as the first entry in the person’s events. The Baptism event will then be used as the fallback event as needed.
OW, neat.
I already have many custom events, so why didn’t I think of that?
Thank you
I always create a birth and death event even if I only have the baptism and burial records because I upload a gedcom to WikiTree, and not having one makes the process very difficult.
Much of my research is in the UK and I found that baptisms happens very soon after birth because so many children died very soon after birth.
I use the baptism/burial date and place in the even and use “before” in the date field. This tells me that the baptism or burial date was used. Sometimes the actual birth date was recorded on the Baptism record, then the normal date is entered.
It is nice to see the date, but the other conditions take priority.
OK tried that, but now the birthplace is gone from the Person Category and replaced by the baptismplace. So using Birth and entering a ‘before date’ seems to meet my requirements most.
Being exact (or nitpicking) isn’t always the best solution. 
Apologies was making a generalised point not specific to your problem
phil
I generally do the same and agree that the majority of baptisms occur
close to birth until you get involved with the Non Conformist church’s
when you get en masse baptism of the entire family up to and including
the parents.
phil
FYI, I used this statement as a prompt to my AI coding environment:
In ProbablyAlive, if a person doesn't have a birth date then it can fallback to other items.
But if a birth event doesn't have a valid date, ProbablyAlive just reports "unknown".
Can you make it so that ProbablyAlive ignores events that don't have birth dates
or has invalid ones?
And it created this fix, with tests:
Not sure that this captures the issue reported here, but this is an example of how AI can be used.