Never include in a database that which you do not know. If the only record you have on an ancestor is a newspaper death notice which says:<\/p>\n
Mrs. Anton Flagstone died on the 5th of August [1890]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
then you don’t have her first name. You don’t have her maiden name. The newspaper may not even provide a location of death or burial. There is one thing that you do know. You know that the wife of Anton Flagstone died on 5 August 1890. Don’t enter in her last name as “unknown,” “[—–],” or “who knows?” Leave it blank. You do not know it.<\/p>\n
Do the same thing for her first name.<\/p>\n
Do not enter her first name as “Mrs,” “Mrs. Anton,” or anything similar. It is fine to leave the first name blank. After all, you don’t know it. Calling her “Mrs. Anton” may cause some programs to inadvertently truncate her name to “Anton” when data is transferred from one program to another.\u00a0That creates an entirely different problem.<\/p>\n
You can enter in the date (and location if the item provides it) and the source. But don’t make up names for someone just because their are blanks. There is no genealogy prize for having the most blanks completed.<\/p>\n
Researchers are allowed to have things they do not know. All genealogists have blanks in their database and in their trees. It means they\u00a0don’t know the information. It does not mean they are an incompetent genealogist.<\/p>\n