Family Historian User Group

I am trying to produce an 'audit trail' of the information I have for my ancestors. So I am starting with my birth certificate with the names of my parents on it. In the relationship to parents I enter birth but I do not seem to be able to source this relationship.

Clearly the birth certificate is a source for my birth and I also enter it as a source for both parents' name. In my father's case he was in the RN at the time of my birth so I also have his service number and hence a cross reference source for his marriage to my mother (both certificates contained his service number). In general, however, I do not have such explicit information to allow me to identify the father or mother - beyond the name.

So the question. Is sourcing the names of the parent(s) sufficient to source the parent-child relationship?

David

FH rigidly follows GEDCOM 5.5, which only allows Source Citations on certain fields, and the Relationship field is not one of them.

It is not necessary to set Relationship to Birth unless there is some doubt, such as where there are multiple parents, step-parents, fostering, adoption, etc.

The fact that the Birth Certificate explicitly identifies Father and Mother is sufficient 'audit trail' information, and citing it from the child's Birth Event and the parent Names or <whole record> is the best you can achieve.

Presumably you have a custom Service Number Attribute that cites both the Birth Certificate and the Marriage Certificate.
This is a variant of the more common case of having an Occupation Attribute that cites such Certificates.
You could also have Residence Attributes that cite those Certificates.

If you wanted to be more specific, you could use the Citation Where within Source field to specify exactly which part of the Certificate is relevant.
So for the Father you could refer to Column 4 of the UK Birth Certificate, and Mother refer to Column 5.
There is a side effect of this when it comes to Reports involving the family members, because instead of listing the Birth Certificate Source just once, it will be listed for each variant of the Citation Where within Source fields (or other Citation fields) if they are nominated to be included by the Report Options.

Mike

Thanks for the response. Prior to FH I was using Legacy which does allow such sourcing, I didn't realize it was a non-standard feature.

David

Since posting this question I have spent (a little) time trying various options and searching online and I decided to share my thoughts in case anyone else is juggling this problem.

1. Since I have downloaded the Assoc tab my first thought was to simply list father & mother as Associations. This can be sourced. Unfortunately, and this may be my lack of knowledge, although I can get Associations to show in the main section of the individual Summary report I cannot get the sources to show themselves.

2. I read online that although the PEDI tag cannot be sourced in the GEDCOM standard it is possible to add a note to the Child Family which can be sourced. Again I managed to get this to show up in the main section of the individual summary report and again no sources showing.

3. Finally, and probably obviously, I tried adding a note to the individual record detailing how I determined the parent-child relationship and adding the sources to that. This is not exactly what I was looking for but ultimately, in situations where there is no single Birth Certificate source, it is actually somewhat better.

David

David, all your observations are spot on.

You do not necessarily have to research the GEDCOM 5.5 Spec online to discover its features.
Use the All tab or the Records Window and expand items of interest by clicking on the [+] boxes.
Right-click on any item to obtain a menu of what can be added.

As you imply, the Sources in Reports could be improved.
The Source Citations for ASSOiated Person and FAMily as Child NOTE do appear in the Property Box yellow Sources pane, and appear in Record Detail Reports for Individuals.
However, even when those fields are customised into Reports the Sources are not included.

I am tempted to report this deficiency to Calico Pie.

P.S. There is also topic Source for notes included in reports (6303) and associated Wish List Ref 432 you can vote for.

Mike

A useful point about the GEDCOM 5.5 standard. I actually have a pdf copy but have found it easier to do an online search than plough through it. I never considered using the All tab which, as you say, is the fast and easy way. Thanks.

David