* Passenger lists

[mezentia]

I think that most of us will have come across our relatives appearing on a passenger list from time to time. This is not always for the purposes of immigration/emigration, but simply for travel from one place to another. My question is how best to record the event?

I would like to be able to create a single event for a departure that results in a sentence of the form:

John Smith appeared on the Passenger List for the vessel Aurora of the P&O Line, Master M. R. James, travelling second class, departing from Liverpool on the 10 May 1865 bound for Singapore. His country of last permanent residence was England, and his country of future intended residence was China.

A similar sentence would be needed for arrivals.

At present I have cobbled together a Passenger List event, but it relies heavily on non-standard use of address and place fields, and a substantial amount of free text. This has knock-on problems when viewing place and address lists, and makes the event quite unintuitive to use if I haven't done so for a while.

Can this be accomplished using a single event? It would seem to require entering information for which no fields currently exist in FH, such as the ship's name and owner, the captain's name (which would, in most cases, not be an individual on file), the class of travel and the use of four place fields for the place of departure, arrival and current and future residence.

[tatewise]

Yes, this is a recurring topic of interest.
See Crime and Punishment Record FH6.2 (14227) and Adding Custom Field to Fact Type (14039).

You cannot add custom fields to custom facts that are not already part of the Gedcom definition.
And even if you could, then they would NOT export in Gedcom to other genealogy products at all.
You would be wise to stick to standard contents for the standard fields such as Place and Address.
An Attribute does have one extra value field that an Event does not.
c.f. Occupation & Education attributes versus Birth, Marriage & Death events.

(In case you were wondering, the Immigration & Emigration events From and To Place fields are special FH extensions that do NOT export to other genealogy products.)

The recommended solution is to use labelled meta-fields in the Note field.
e.g.
Vessel: Aurora of the P&O Line
Captain: Master M. R. James
Class: second
etc...
Then in the Sentence Template you use the =GetLabelledText(...) function.
e.g.
< for the vessel {=GetLabelledText(%FACT.NOTE2%,"Vessel: ")},>
< {=GetLabelledText(%FACT.NOTE2%,"Captain: ")},>
< travelling {=GetLabelledText(%FACT.NOTE2%,"Class: ")} class,>
etc...

This technique allows any combination of the labels to be included in any order.
Just try and make them as general purpose as possible within the context of the fact.
The details in the Note field export satisfactorily in Gedcom to other products.

[tatewise]

Here are some further thoughts to consider.

In your Churching (14254) scenario you can use the same =GetLabelledText(...) technique for the fee, where the Note contains:
Fee: 1s and 4d
and the Sentence Template snippet becomes:
<, for a fee of {=GetLabelledText(%FACT.NOTE2%,"Fee: ")}>
If you knew the minister conducting the churching then you could similarly add to the Note:
Minister: Rev. John Smith

Regarding Passenger Lists there are several ready made custom facts provided, primarily for FTM migrants to FH, but anyone can use them.
Use Tools > Fact Types and in Fact Set top left choose Extended Set and follow the popup instructions to reveal them.
You will find Arrival & Departure and Origin & Destination attributes.
So used in combination these offer four sets of standard fact fields plus the attribute values.

Also there is the fhugdownloads:contents:travel_fact_set|> Fact Set ~ Travel that I believe you have been advised about before.

I am working on how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates to offer advice on the topics in this thread.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Another possible approach which I am experimenting with, as I dislike having pairs of events (departure/arrival) for what is essentially a single event (a journey):

• Edit the 'Standard' Fact type Emigration to have the label 'Travelled' and the Abbreviation 'Travelled', and edit the sentence template to say 'travelled' rather than emigrated. (You may also wish to amend the witness possibilities -- I haven't bothered as I record the people travelling together in a note).
• Hide the Standard Fact type 'Immigration' so you don't use it in error.

Advantages:

• You can have a single event for the journey (and record in a note the purpose of the journey, and details, and whether it was intended to be a permanent relocation/emigration-immigration or travel for some other reason if you know it.

Disadvantages:

• It produces a non-standard GEDcom file -- but FH does that anyway by having two places associated with the Immigration and Emigration events.

No doubt others will come up with other pros and cons.

[mezentia]

Thank you again Mike, I've now managed to modfy the Churched template to get it to display just as I need in my narrative reports.

Thanks too for the reminder - I seem to recall the advice to look at the Travel fact set, and indeed I do have it on my PC. However, I found the events it provided did not seem to provide the necessary means of collating, in a single event, all the information pertinent to that event, and hence my re-statement of the requirement. It might be the travel fact set has changed since I downloaded it, so I'll take another peek to see.

I had not come across the =GetLabelledText(...) technique before, so I appreciate your pointing it out. I think it will be a method that will make the Passenger List event for my relatives capable of being crafted into a more readable sentence in narrative reports as well as making the raw data on the event within FH more understandable.

I look forward to your how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates. I've been perusing the Help in this area, but sometimes find it's easier, and quicker, to ask the question rather than burn lots of midnight candles

[mezentia]

I've been having a go at this now for another event, appearing on a Crew List. Whilst I can get the sentences contructed into something that resembles plain English, the narrative report option then follows the sentence template with the contents of the note:

George was listed on the Crew List for the vessel Capania where he was engaged as a Trimmer at Liverpool on 5 June 1906 for a wage of £4 10s. He was Discharged at Liverpool on 30 June 1906. His previous vessel was the Sauce. Vessel: Capania
Capacity: Trimmer
Wage: £4 10s
Reason for Leaving: Discharged
Place_of_Leaving: Liverpool
Date_of_Leaving: 30 June 1906
Last vessel: Sauce. George appeared in the census on 2 April 1911 in Litherland, Lancashire, England aged 26.(*5)

How do I suppress the note field appearing in the report for this fact?

[E Wilcock]

Yes, this is a recurring topic of interest.
See Crime and Punishment Record FH6.2 (14227) and Adding Custom Field to Fact Type (14039).

The recommended solution is to use labelled meta-fields in the Note field.
e.g.
Vessel: Aurora of the P&O Line
Captain: Master M. R. James
Class: second
etc...
Then in the Sentence Template you use the =GetLabelledText(...) function.
e.g.
< for the vessel {=GetLabelledText(%FACT.NOTE2%,"Vessel: ")},>
< {=GetLabelledText(%FACT.NOTE2%,"Captain: ")},>
< travelling {=GetLabelledText(%FACT.NOTE2%,"Class: ")} class,>
etc...

This technique allows any combination of the labels to be included in any order.

This arose also when I was struggling to invent a Deportation Event Tag. Could you enlarge a bit Mike please about the labelled meta fields in the Note field?
Is there a way to set up that Note field when editing the Event so the names of the meta-fields are already there? Or does one have to type them in every time on adds that event?
And if one has to type them in every time, is the purpose of the field format with an equal sign only so that the information makes sense in non-narrative reports where sentences are not used?

[tatewise]

The answers are pretty much all given in how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates under Custom Fact Fields which has been updated in recent weeks.

@mezentia - Use the privacy [[ brackets ]] technique to optionally exclude them from Reports.
It is advisable to put those brackets on a separate line, one before, and one after, all the Meta-fields.
All Reports have an Option to include or exclude private Notes and retain or exclude the brackets.

@E Wilcock - Use the handy feature via the Advanced button for Override Templates that offers an Auto-Create Note field that can hold the meta-field Note labels, so they automatically get created whenever that Fact is added.

The Meta-field format is only required to make the Label distinct enough to be detected by the {=GetLabelledText(%FACT.NOTE2%,"Label: ")} bearing mind that the Label does NOT have to be at the beginning of the paragraph. As long as the Label is distinct enough it can be anything you like with or without colon (:) or equals (=) symbols. It simply must NOT occur anywhere else in the Note box. But, yes, it is sensible to make the Meta-fields look tidy in non-narrative reports.

[E Wilcock]

Thank you Mike - the penny has dropped. So one doesnt need to keep retyping - Now I see why it would be good for Deportation.

And I think I now understand the privacy brackets too. So that, if one includes the Event Note field in the sentence output, the meta data fields and content (which have already been fetched) will not be repeated within the {note} code?

[mezentia]

Thanks Mike. Easy when you know how

[tatewise]

Yes, that is all true, and there are also Report > Options that govern Note text in [[ brackets ]] for every type of Report.