* Transcription of a Will

[NewcastleOZ]

Hi
I am an inexperienced user and need some guidance about how to record the full contents of a Will and display same in a report(s).

In the future I intend to publish a book or booklet on my family history. Included in my publication will be some Wills that I have transcribed. I have transcribed the Wills because I doubt whether I am legally able to copy and publish them without permission. Also some of them are barely legible.

My problem is how to record my transcription in Family Historian and then be able to produce a report of an individual ancestor that includes the full transcription. I am undecided but I am leaning towards using the individual narrative report to display the full transcription of an individual's Will and having it listed chronologically amongst other facts / events of the individual.

This is what I have so far done. In Family Historian each transcribed Will has its own source record and I have included my transcription of the Will in the 'actual text' field of the source record. I have also used the Will Fact in the property box to record the date and place of the making of the Will. I have not used the notes field of the Will Fact because I feel the full contents of the Will have more merit than a note.

Next to the Facts tab in the property box is the Notes tab. I have not used this to record the full transcription of a Will because I feel that the Will itself has more weight than a note.

From here on I am lost as to what to do.


kind regards

[Jane]

Notes are just what FH (and gedcom) calls long text fields, personally I keep transcriptions in Note records to I can attach them to more than one place (eg the source and the fact).

[tatewise]

Once the testator has died and probate declared then Wills & Testaments become public documents so copyright does not apply.
If you Google Search for Are wills public documents UK then there is plenty of advice on the subject.

I have several Wills with each one transcribed in a separate Source Record exactly as you have done.
I also attach a scanned image of the Will to the Source Record via its Multimedia tab.

I have several Facts that are each linked to the same Source Record via a Citation:

• The Will Standard Event for the testator.
• A Will Executor Custom Attribute for each executor.
• A Will Legacy Custom Attribute for each legatee.
• A Will Witness Custom Attribute for each witness.

Just to complete the picture I also have a Source Record for the Probate documents, which is linked via Citations to:

• The Probate Standard Event for the testator.
• An Inheritance Custom Attribute for each beneficiary.

I prefer a Custom Attribute to a Custom Event because it allows details such as whose Will and the legacy value to be recorded in the Attribute Value field.

The Individual Narrative Report will include an entry for such Facts as:

WillFacts.png (12.88 KiB) Viewed 3996 times

The superscript 27 on the Will sentence cross-references the Source entry later in the Report, but to include the transcript the Report Options > Sources tab needs the Text From Source option ticked:

WillTranscript.png (24.3 KiB) Viewed 3996 times

with the document image attached:

WillImage.png (73.93 KiB) Viewed 3996 times

[LornaCraig]

If you don't want the transcription of the will to be relegated to the sources section of a report, an alternative to entering it all in a note is to use the 'Free Text' item when creating a book/booklet. This allows you to insert a chunk of text between other items in the book. It may not be possible to place it exactly where you want it but it could be given a prominent postion after an individual narrative report, with an appropriate heading.
This may be preferable to having a very long section of text in the Sources section. (You should still include text in the Source record itself, but don't need to include the 'Text From Source' in the report).
See the guidance in the Help files:

Capture.JPG (79.2 KiB) Viewed 3966 times

[NewcastleOZ]

Thank you for your comments.

Your comments give me some options to consider and act upon.

Your help is much appreciated.

regards
Maxine Johnson