Thursday 7 February 2013

Who else shares my birthday?

Today is my birthday - according to Facebook posts I share it with Charles Dickens the author.  And my good friend from school FM - not only the same day but the same year - so glad I found her again via Facebook after all these years!

I use Family Historian to store my family tree information and one of the reasons that I like it so much is that you can customise it to suit your own requirements.  I thought I'd have a look to see who else in my extended families shares today with me as any kind of anniversary.  Some family tree programs provide this functionality built in, but as it is a bit frivolous I suppose the designers of Family Historian thought that if we wanted it we would work it out for ourselves - unless I'm missing something of course!

The easiest way to design a new query in Family Historian is to start with an existing one and change it to suit your needs.  I found one that brought back All Facts - so every birth, marriage, death, immigration, emigration, accident, joining the army, writing a will, entry in a census return or service at sea that I've ever entered in my family tree.  Then I amended it to require the entry of a parameter before it ran - and made this number of month and number of day.

Defining the Columns that will display in the Results

Defining which records to retrieve, ie Only Facts which satisfy the Parameter Criteria

Pop Up Parameter Box which displays when Run Arrow is clicked

The Results for 7th February on my Family Tree - with Living people hidden
So not a particularly busy day the 7th Feburary over the years.  My birthday - that's the top hidden result, my parents' wedding two years to the day before I was born, that's the next one down, two other births and a couple of other things. 

I tried the same query on the OH's tree and got even fewer results.  
Results for 7th February from my OH's Family Tree - NB the double entries for Burial and Grave Location
If you compare this to the results I was getting for things that happened around Christmas, 30+ baptisms and 20+ marriages between my tree and the OH's you can see that 7th February is quite a quiet sort of day. 

Finally to add to the birthday list I had a quick Google - it seems today is also shared by Eddie Izzard (only one year younger than me), Hattie Jaques, Dick Emery, Pete Postlethwaite and Alan Lancaster (the bass player from Status Quo) amongst many more. 

3 comments:

Robyn said...

You can add Jim Sweeney - actor and improviser to that list Linda. Notable events on my birthday include the birth of the first test tube baby (1977) and the Concorde Paris crash (2000) but not many notable births so far as I know.

Robyn said...

Tried to add that I hope you had a lovely day yesterday, but the iPad refused to let me write any more! xx

BarnsleyHistorian said...

Thanks Robyn, it was quiet as Nigel had to finish the Barnsley CAMRA magazine (secretary, magazine editor, website editor, pubs guide editor, tasting panel chair, GBBF site manager ...) We have a trip to Durham with both mums planned in May for a holiday ... saving ourselves for that.