Events¶
An event is something that took place at a particular time in a particular place. Births, baptisms, marriages, emigrations, deaths — but also confirmations, census records, military service, graduations, and much more.
Why are events important?¶
An event is more precise than a note on a person. With events, you can:
- Show multiple people's lives on the same timeline
- Link multiple people to the same event (e.g. a married couple and witnesses)
- See which events took place at a specific place
- Link sources and media to that particular event — not just to the person in general
Event types¶
| Type | Label |
|---|---|
| birth | Birth |
| baptism | Baptism |
| believers_baptism | Believer's baptism |
| adoption | Adoption |
| confirmation | Confirmation |
| first_communion | First communion |
| engagement | Engagement |
| marriage_bann | Marriage banns |
| marriage | Marriage |
| cohabitation | Moving in together |
| separation | Separation |
| divorce | Divorce |
| death | Death |
| burial | Burial |
| cremation | Cremation |
| probate | Probate |
| will | Will |
| emigration | Emigration |
| immigration | Immigration |
| naturalization | Naturalization |
| military | Military service |
| census | Census |
| residence | Residence |
| occupation | Occupation |
| person_title | Title |
| ordination | Ordination |
| retirement | Retirement |
| graduation | Graduation |
| education | Education |
| visit | Visit |
| other | Other |
Roles¶
Each person is linked to an event with a role. The roles are shared across all event types:
| Role | Label | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| primary | Primary person | The person the event is about — the one being born, dying, getting married |
| spouse | Spouse | The other party in a marriage or divorce |
| parent | Parent | Parent at a baptism or census |
| child | Child | Child at a census |
| witness | Witness | Marriage witness, baptism witness |
| officiant | Officiant | Priest, mayor, or other person performing the ceremony |
| sponsor | Sponsor (godparent) | Godparent at a baptism |
| attendee | Attendee | Other participants |
| other | Other | A role that doesn't fit the above |
Choose the role carefully
The role affects how the event is displayed on the person's page and in the timeline. A person with the role Witness at a wedding is shown as a witness, not as the groom or bride.
Persons with the roles Witness, Officiant, Attendee, and Other are linked to the event's primary person and spouse. If the event has neither, they're linked to the event's other persons. The links show up for the persons under Through events and can be shown in the family tree's network view.
Create an event¶
You can create events from three places:
- From a person's page — the Events tab → "+ Add event". The person is automatically linked as the Primary person. The Add place button on the person's Places tab opens the same dialog.
- From a place's page — the event is automatically linked to the place. On the place's Persons tab, the button is called Link person via event.
- From the main menu — Events → Add event.
Link a person to an event that already exists
If the event already exists — for example a baptism where the person was a witness — you don't need to create a new one. Click Link existing event on the person's Events tab, look up the event, choose the person's role, and click Link. → Read more
In the form, you fill in:
- Type — choose from the list above
- Title — optional. If you leave the field empty, the event gets a heading automatically, see Heading without a title of its own. Write a title of your own if you want something else, e.g. "Marriage in Mariakyrkan".
- Description — longer free text about the event
- Date — a full date, a year and month, or just a year, just like for persons. With Date accuracy you can also state how certain the date is.
- Place — choose an existing place or create a new one directly in the form
- Participants — add one or more persons with their respective roles: choose a person and a role and click Add person. If you've chosen a person but not clicked the button, the person is added when you save.
- Notes — shorter notes
- Private — mark the event as private. It's shown with a padlock. The GEDCOM export, the reports, and the family tree PDF leave private events out unless you check that they should be included. → Private events in the export · → Share safely in the reports
Heading without a title of its own¶
An event without a title of its own gets a heading built from the event type and the persons, for example "Anna Andersson born", "Marriage: Erik Berg & Anna Andersson", or "Divorce: Erik Berg & Anna Andersson". The names are chosen like this:
- The persons with the role Primary person.
- If there's no primary person, all linked persons are used, for example two persons with the role Spouse.
- If there are no persons at all, only the event type is shown, for example "Divorce".
While you fill in the form, the heading is shown in the title field, so you can see what applies if you leave it empty. The heading follows the language you've chosen in the program.
Birth and death¶
Birth and death events are linked to the person's birth and death details both ways. If you add, change, merge, or delete a birth or death event where the person is the Primary person, the person's date and place are updated, and a person with a death event is shown as deceased. If a person has several such events, the person's Events tab asks you to merge them. → Read more
The couple's events¶
Engagement, marriage banns, marriage, moving in together, separation, and divorce are linked to the couple's partner relationship when both are Primary person or Spouse:
- The event is linked to the couple's relationship. If the couple has no relationship, one is created — a marriage, for example, gives a relationship with the form married. Marriage banns don't create a relationship.
- A marriage turns an engagement, a cohabitation, or a partnership into married. A divorce or separation ends the relationship.
- If you change the date of the event, the relationship's date follows.
- If you delete the marriage, or change its type or participants, the relationship becomes partner without dates. If you delete the divorce, the relationship becomes ongoing again.
→ Read more about the relationship and the events
The events list¶
Go to Events in the main menu to see all events. List view is the default. You can:
- Search by title, description, place, the participants' names, tags, and categories — and by event type: "death" or "died" finds deaths and "burial" finds burials (at least three characters). The search ignores upper and lower case and accents.
- Filter by event type, date range, tags, and categories
- Filter by person — type a name to find every event linked to a specific person, across the whole database (not just the page you're currently on)
- Sort by date, type, or title — sorting applies to all events, not just the page you're on. Titles are sorted by the heading that is shown, also for events without a title of their own
- Switch view between card view and list view
In list view, the names of persons linked to each event are shown (up to 5 — additional persons are shown as "+X more"), making it easy to tell apart, e.g., multiple deaths or marriages in the list.
Click an event to open its detail page.
The event page¶
The detail page for an event shows the type, date, place, description, notes, participants with roles, linked media, and source citations. From here you can also edit or delete the event.
Private events are shown with a padlock icon in the heading.
The heading also has a bookmark button and a note button: bookmark the event to come back later, or link it to a research note. → Read more about bookmarks
The Blog tab shows the blog posts linked to the event, 20 at a time. The number on the tab shows how many there are. Click a post to open it. The link is made in the blog editor. → Read more about the blog
Tags and categories¶
Just like with persons, you can set tags and categories on events to group and filter them. You can add them directly in the form when creating or editing the event, or afterwards via the pencil icon next to "Tags and categories" on the event page.
→ Read more about tags and categories
Validation¶
PastPaths checks that the event is plausible in relation to the life data of the people involved.
Errors — block saving:
- Birth event dated after the person's date of death
- Death event dated before the person's date of birth
Warnings — require confirmation:
| Situation | Event type |
|---|---|
| Event date differs by more than 30 days from the person's registered date of birth | Birth |
| Event date differs by more than 30 days from the person's registered date of death | Death |
| The event took place before the person was born | All others |
| The event took place after the person's date of death | All others |
| The person was under 15 at the time of marriage | Marriage |
| The person was over 80 at the time of marriage | Marriage |
| Baptism dated before the person's birth | Baptism |
| The person was under 5 at an education event | Education |
| The person was under 10 at an occupation event | Occupation |
Information — shown without restriction:
- A small difference (under 30 days) between the event date and the registered date of birth/death
- Baptism more than 365 days after birth
- Occupation event at an unusually high age (over 75)
Statistics¶
Click the bar chart icon in the events list to see a summary: total number of events, distribution by type, and the time span between the earliest and most recently registered dates.
Today's events¶
The welcome page also shows other life events (deaths, marriages, etc.) that happen to fall on today's date — regardless of year — grouped by event type, with the names of the linked persons. Births aren't shown here since they're already covered by today's birthdays.
As with birthdays, an exact date (day, month, and year) is required for an event to appear in the list.
→ Browse the full calendar to see other days than today.
Imported events¶
During GEDCOM import, events are created automatically from standard tags. PastPaths interprets, among others:
| GEDCOM tag | Event type |
|---|---|
| BIRT | Birth |
| CHR | Baptism |
| CHRA | Believer's baptism |
| BAPM | Baptism (believer's baptism in files from PastPaths or when TYPE says believer's or adult baptism) |
| CONF | Confirmation |
| FCOM | First communion |
| ENGA | Engagement |
| MARB | Marriage banns |
| MARR | Marriage |
| DIV | Divorce |
| ADOP | Adoption |
| DEAT | Death |
| BURI | Burial |
| CREM | Cremation |
| PROB | Probate |
| WILL | Will |
| EMIG | Emigration |
| IMMI | Immigration |
| NATU | Naturalization |
| MILI | Military service |
| CENS | Census |
| RESI | Residence |
| OCCU | Occupation |
| TITL | Title |
| ORDN | Ordination |
| EDUC | Education |
If the event has a description of its own in the file (TYPE, for example "Household examination 1850" under a census), it becomes the event's title. On export, the title is written back as TYPE, so it comes along to other programs.
Events PastPaths has no type of its own for become Other with the event's name and the tag as the title. Age, cause, agency, and religion under an event go into the description. An event marked as private in the file (RESN or _PRIV) becomes private. → Read more
Engagement, marriage banns, marriage, and divorce belong to the family in GEDCOM and are linked to both spouses as primary persons and to the couple's relationship. Moving in together and separation have no tag of their own in GEDCOM and are written as a generic event (EVEN). For an adoption, the child becomes the primary person and the adoptive parents get the role Parent. → Read more
Imported events may have incomplete data — e.g. only a year without a place. That's normal; fill in more as you find it.
→ Read more about GEDCOM import
Delete an event¶
You can delete an event from:
- The events list — the trash can on the row
- The event page — the trash can in the header
- The event dialog — the Delete button
- The timeline — the ⋮ menu next to the event, both on the timeline page and on a place's Events tab
Before the event is deleted, PastPaths shows what will be removed and what will be unlinked, for example participants, media, and source citations.
If you delete a birth or death event, the person's date and place of birth or death are cleared, unless the person has another such event.
If the event starts or ends a partner relationship, the confirmation has a section The couple's relationship:
- A marriage, engagement, or moving in together that starts the relationship: the relationship becomes partner without start and end dates and without an end reason. The checkboxes Also delete the divorce (when it belongs only to the relationship) and Also delete the relationship are empty to start with. If you don't tick anything, the relationship is kept and the divorce is unlinked.
- A divorce or separation: the relationship becomes ongoing again.
The checkboxes are shown wherever you can delete the event.
Deletion is permanent
This cannot be undone. Check that no sources or media files are linked only to that particular event before removing it.