Family Historian User Group

I'm sure I've said it before somewhere, but I would find it really helpful if it reminded you which source you're auto-citing. I confess it hadn't occurred to me before, but the natural place for this is on the sources pane of the property box rather than the bottom of the main window. Good idea Jon...

P.S. I don't mean to belittle 'keeping up with the Jonses' as a policy... Sometimes it's essential. People will choose software because it looks nice and maybe find out later whether it's really useful for what they're trying to do. The more people buy it, the more can be invested in developments th...

A personal view, having had it on beta for a while... The Focus window is a much nicer looking start than a list of names (and possibly a case of keeping up with the Joneses), but doesn't make a great deal of difference to the way I work (which is nearly always on a working diagram plus the property...

DrDBW said:
Thankfully PR doesn't effect the quality of the program...

Except that the more they sell, the more they can invest in development. In the long run, the quality of the program depends to a large extent on the quality of its marketing.

David Dewick said:
the child's surname on his birth certificate is different to the surname the family used on the census.

David

We have a lot of those where the birth is registered with the mother's maiden name and they were married soon after, so the child always used the father's name.

My favourite unique feature of FH is the ability to work directly on the diagram, so you can see the effect of your changes as you go along. It's amazing how often I look at other people's trees that have people attached to the wrong families or duplicated, presumably because they're editing in some...

There is a Header Record in the Gedcom that you can get at in FH with View > Special Records >. It's originally intended for submission to the LDS (and probably only there in FH to maintain 100% compatibility), but it contains a free text File Description in which you could reasonably record that ki...

I use narrative reports all the time, but wouldn't want duplicate birth or death events (no one's born twice), nor indeed duplicate (as opposed to multiple) marriages. One event with multiple citations would seem more appropriate.

Whether there's an accepted convention I don't know (but I doubt it). The problem it seems to me with worrying about the difference between approximate, calculated, estimated and so on, is that more often than not the date of birth is actually a probability, based on a variety of sources such as dat...

I've been sent by post by a GenesReunited contact a photocopy of a photocopy of a tantalising corner of a family tree diagram that looks like it was prepared by FH by someone who must be my 3rd cousin once removed. There's a pencilled note saying 'my parents' under Leonard & Phyllis. Are you here Mr...

Some of the marriage index pages have more than 2 couples, sometimes up to 8. And be a bit careful if there's only one or two, it may be that others on the same page have been mis-transcribed. If you know the wife's given name, place of birth and age from a census after they're married, it's sometim...

It's possible of course to record several birth events with different dates, each with their own source reference and assesment. I prefer in such cases to record one event with what I think is the most likely date taking into account all the available information, probably with an (approx) qualifier...

Vote for item 324, Support for Plug Ins (APIs) so Nick can integrate Gedcom census with FH.

My guess is the reason they've done this is because of the significant proportion of errors in the page range indexes. They transcribed the first and last names on the page and assumed that the range of names is whatever is alphabetically between them. 2 serious oversights in this strategy... 1) If ...

At the risk of being boring, it doesn't matter to me as a user which version of the Gedcom standard (if any) FH stores its own data in, as long as it provides the functionality I need. But this means I need to be able to export a 'standard' Gedcom to upload to GR, Ancestry and the like (take standar...

You're right Jane (and sorry hellfire for highjacking the thread off-topic)... I think the real point is that whatever event or events you use to record what you've found on the census, you have to do it in FH for the individuals rather than the family.

Jane said: ...why are you not recording Census information correctly...? Sorry, but I have to take issue with 'correctly'. As always in these discussions, it depends what you're trying to achieve. IMHO censuses are better treated as sources rather than events. Although obviously a historical event,...

PeterWieland said:
The rest of my direct lines I already know about and the 1911 census entries will only be for completeness

That's what we thought too, but using Nick's search-for-household trick we've found a few surprises that have made us buy the images.

ermintrude said: Am I right that I can delete versions say 1-9 ... Absolutely, in fact there's no need to keep any of them unless you want to, for example to revert to how you had it last week in case you mess it up somehow. Always a good idea to make a copy of the latest and put it somewhere else ...

It doesn't make any difference whether you publish your family tree or not. All the information necessary for anyone in the world to postumously perform any pseudo-religious ceremony they like, is already a matter of public record (indeed not even that, there are plenty of 'Mrs Mary Smith's and the ...

Remember what you're trying to achieve rather than letting the program bully you into doing things you're not interested in. It's there to help you. You can use as much or as little of the features as you want. You could start by adding yourself and immediate family, open a diagram (I usually use An...

Equally, the fact often has a variety of sources, often conflicting, with different levels of reliability. The reliability attaches to the citation, so is related to the individual fact and the source, not just the source.

The LDS certainly baptise the deceased, that's the whole point of the IGI... It seems the more ancestors you have in Heaven the more likely you are to get in. Ancestry (and all the other sites I've seen) promise no one can see your tree unless you explicitly allow it.

FYI. I asked Ancestry when they would have the 1911 census on subscription... just got this reply: Due to the nature of the distribution agreement we don’t yet know when this content will be available to publishers so that it can be supplied within a subscription service. This content is currently o...

I rather agree with you Jon... I've always kept out of arguments about what constitutes a 'standard' Gedcom. It makes no difference to me how FH stores the data as long as it supports the functionality I need. I'm always going to do some kind of 'export' operation before I give my data to anyone els...