* Residence and Electoral Role

[davidm_uk]

I've recently started to find ancestors in the Ancestry Electoral Registers, 1832-1965, but not yet entered the information into FH. Originally I'd intended to just use the "Register of Electors" fact, but that seems a bit clumsy if I have a dozen or more entries over a period of years for a person living at the same address.

Something simpler, like the person lived at the address from YYYY to YYYY, maybe with first date and last date fact entries might be tidier, with a single source and then all the electoral role entries listed in that source (and all the images attached to it).

Before proceeding I thought I'd ask what others do about recording the electoral roll data, as it's probably only later that I'll twig the significance of doing it one way or another?

[ColeValleyGirl]

I use Residence, with start and finish dates (as you've suggested) and link it via citations to each individual Electoral Roll (each of which is a separate source). That way, if I find another ancestor in the same Electoral Roll, I can link to the same source via a different citation.

[RSellens]

I have been using Ancestral Sources to enter Electoral Role entries, tweaking the templates to refer to them rather than Census, and storing the address in the residence field. Each entry then has its own source against the 'primary' person in the address.
Obviously you can use the between or from/to dates on a sigle residence entry, but what i have found with some of my family is that they did move around between flats/buildings that they rented, so assuming that they did stay in the same address between entries on the role is risky. So i decided to stick with having the fact at a known date.

Richard

[tatewise]

There is no problem with using the Residence attribute and a Date period.

I would create a separate Source Record for each Electoral Register entry, and cite them all from the Residence attribute.

That gives you more options in the future if you change your mind or find more relevant entries.

If you wanted to change to a separate Fact citing each Electoral Register entry separately, then that would be straightforward.

If you discovered somebody on only some Electoral Register entries that needed recording then that is straightforward too.

If you were to lump all the Electoral Register entries into one Source Record then those last two options become much more difficult.