Suggestions for additional Event types

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1

I’d like to make a case for a few Event labels that are not in the current options that auto-populate when you create an event. I don’t know if you are limiting the available Event types to existing GEDCOM tags? If so, I understand, so never mind. I’m aware that Rootsfinder allows me to type in a custom event label, but I always worry that these will cause problems if/when I have to export my database. So, pending those and other considerations I may not be aware of, here are a few event types I wish I didn’t have to type in:

  • Court. Probate is a specific kind of court proceeding, but I very often need to record events where people were involved in civil (or, now and then, criminal) proceedings which had nothing to do with wills or estates. For many places and eras, court records are a big proportion of the available sources.
  • Land. I’m aware that PROP (property) is a GEDCOM tag and land doesn’t have one, but… I think it should. Property is ambiguous, because it could mean anything of value. Land records are a crucial, very commonly used genealogical resource. One could argue that “real estate” would be a better term (if you buy an apartment you’re not really buying land per se), but the biggest genealogy sites, journals & etc. all use the term “land records.”

Those are the two main ones that come to my mind. If I think of another I’ll add it, and perhaps others have additional suggestions.

2

The issue is both Court and Land are non-standard event types, and they aren’t commonly seen in the thousands of gedcoms that I’ve processed. I could add them to the dropdown list, but the net result in an export is the same as if you had entered them as a custom event. They would be exported as a generic event with a type of Court or Land.

(I just found out that a custom Land event is exported as a LAN tag, but most gedcom importers don’t recognize the LAN tag, so I’m going to change it to be exported as a generic event of type Land.)

3

Yeah, I guess my issue here is more with the GEDCOM standard than with Rootsfinder. Never mind!