Genealogy’s black hole

I haven’t done much work on the DyNAstyDb in the past few months apart from the work to generate the Ellis Families of West Riding’s pages. In the back of my mind though I am trying to solve the issues that are coming up as I get to the black hole years.

Trying to do something like DyNAstyDB requires enough information from the inputs to try and tie events to individuals. For family history records, the years where information is parse is problematic. For birth records, the years 1837 to 1911, all the index records just show the names of the individual born. From the 3rd Quarter of 1911, the mother’s maiden name was included which does help. Death Records on the other hand only had the age of the individual included in 1959! I need to check this but Marriage records for some time did not specify whom the individual was getting married to.

Fortunately, census records help in some regard. The latest 1901 census allows the program at least an opportunity to find events prior to 1901 mainly births and marriages. But until the 1911 census records become available, there is quite a few years which fall into this 1901 to 1911 black hole for births and marriages and whilst it may be possible to determine some deaths from the census records, deaths will be an issue for a while. These years are the ones, I describe as genealogy’s black hole. (At least for English based research).

Personal family research has an advantage over me here, in that the missing years information could still be held by a living individual such as a grand parent or in family records of some sort. Additionally, one can always try to get a copy of the original document to access additional information.

So, though no physical works has been done, my mind is working out the options I have to reduce the possibilities that I will have families on one side of the 1901 divide separated from the other.

Suggestions anyone?

Cheers