Family Historian User Group

I'm in the individual properties screen, where I find myself a lot.

On this screen I can add details for name, details for Birth, Death, Buried, etc., and I've added Living, Will.

I can likewise add details for spouse.

And details for Marriage.

But sometimes the only detail I know is Yes, they were married, but I don't know the date or year, and I don't know the place. So when it comes to details, it's a blank. But I know they were married. (They were at least a couple recognized by all descendants and by the bards that told their tales.)

So, in this properties screen, I want to source the marriage from the documents I've gotten the rest of the details, and it could be the only details I know are just the names. (Data from Bartrums WG2, for instance.)

But if I attempt to assign a source I get the warning that there is "No data to add a citation to."

What I'm really being told is there has been no fact data entity created to add a citation to.

My work around is to dump in a quick "1222" (easy typing, don't care if it's 400 years too early) to create the fact, add my source citation to the fact, and then go back and delete the "1222" date. Typing "1222" into date creates a data entity. (Granted, if I'm focusing on documenting which marriage it was in the "Text from Source" or "Note" items in the citation, or making sure the Status reads right, I sure hope I remember to delete the 1222 marriage date

As a Wish List idea, could consideration be given that when adding a source to something that doesn't yet exist, that the software just go ahead and create the data entity? It would represent something as simple as "Married? Yes." but, most importantly, it's providing a source for that.

On the Facts tab of the Individual Property Box you can use Add Fact to add the Marriage Event and can then add a Source for it.

Happy New Year Stewart,
Did you read Please Read Before Posting Wishes (6176)?
I have moved this to the FH General Usage Forum for further discussion, but can move it back if still unresolved.

You ask "when adding a source to something that doesn't yet exist, that the software just go ahead and create the data entity?"
But how does FH know what data entity to create? It can't read your mind to determine that a Marriage Event is needed.

As Peter suggests, use the Facts tab to add whatever fact you need without any Place or Date and add the Source Citation to that.

If you are not certain that they actually married, then don't add the Marriage Event and instead add the Source Citation to the Family record that defines their relationship.

It's faster for me to just dump a date into the date field on the Main tab. That will automatically create the fact that I can then add a source to.

Until I enter date, however, no fact is created, and no source can be attached.

If I put the cursor in the data field spot, on the right side, in the Sources For: area, it does know I'm focused on the Marriage field.

Rather than go to the Facts tab to add a new event, in this case a marriage event, or just stay on the Main tab and put a nonesence data into the field, if my focus is on the Marriage data field, and I click either Add Citation of Paste Citation, then create the fact (as if I'd entered a date) and attach the source already.

I know it is a marriage because this set of data provides either marriages, or extra-marital/mistresses, so I'd like to have the Source attached to a Marriage Fact, vice a Family Record.

This was just a request which would save me several steps and let me stay on the Main tab rather than force me over into the Facts tab (unless I took the shortcut step of just dumping a bogus date in to create an event, then deleting the bogus date.)

Thanks.

But I know they were married. (They were at least a couple recognized by all descendants and by the bards that told their tales.)

I'm going to put on my linguist's hat here and talk about data source. One of my college professors has published papers on a family of languages spoken by people in the Andes that has data source built into them, the same way that most utterances in English require us to say whether something is singular or plural.

If you were present at the marriage, you have personal knowledge that a couple was married. Anything else is "someone said so" knowledge. There are other useful categories of knowledge these languages use, such as inferred knowledge, and historical knowledge ("no one alive could know"), and so on.

It has been very useful to apply these concepts to genealogy. Too often we say "I know [something]" when really, what we mean is that we have come to a conclusion about it. One of the reasons I chose Family Historian over other programs is that it was easier to work from a source and extract the data from it, after I had concluded that the record I had in had was likely to belong to the people I was researching.

So I would caution against putting in unsourced blank events. The data that gets passed down in the family which 'everyone knows' is often what causes us to have a brick wall. If your only source for something is family knowledge, I suggest creating a source of some kind -- "Interview with [person's name] conducted on [date]" and working from that.

If you don't, and just slam the "everyone knows" data into your database, somewhere down the line, you're going to have a moment where you say 'wait a minute, where did that information come from'?

In this particular case, if you create an otherwise empty marriage for a couple because "everyone knows" they were married, what happens when you run a query to see what couples don't have any marriage events associated with them? Won't your empty marriage mess up the query?

I chose Family Historian over many other programs on purpose to avoid this behavior:

It's faster for me to just dump a date into the date field on the Main tab. That will automatically create the fact that I can then add a source to.

It's better for me to have a source and extract the information using Auto-Source Citation than to just slam data into the database and hope that I remember to attach a source later.

If you don't, and just slam the "everyone knows" data into your database, somewhere down the line, you're going to have a moment where you say 'wait a minute, where did that information come from'?

In this particular case, if you create an otherwise empty marriage for a couple because "everyone knows" they were married, what happens when you run a query to see what couples don't have any marriage events associated with them? Won't your empty marriage mess up the query?

A marriage with only a source is an event with a detail. Surely acceptable to record as such.

That is the point. I know exactly where the fact of a marriage comes from. This particular case is the ancestry of Rose Trevor, aka Gwenhyfar, descendant of Tudur Trefor. My source is P.C. Bartrum's Welsh Genealogies, WG1 (for the period 300-1400), as found on cadair.aber.ac.uk.

If Batrum believed two people were married, especially in Wales, I'll consider it researched.

I'm not using "everyone knows." I'm citing Bartrum. Our Rose is found on TUDUR TREFOR 14, page 883, of WG1. She is shown as married to Otwel Worsley. No date, no place. The marriage is likewise shown in Lewys Dwnn's Visitation, Vol 2, pg. 317, as Ros = Otwel Vesley. Also no date, no place. (When I said "Bard," and "everyone knows," isn't that what the Vistations were? We can either use a Visitation as a source and go with it, or reject it as heresay because it's not recorded in the county records office.)

For Rose's marriage to Otwel I actually have two sources.

So I have an event, without a date, without a place, that is nonetheless not empty. It does have a source. Two even. And given it's from the mid-1400s I'm probably not going to find it in the registry so date and place are going to be really hard to find. (I might nail it down to a window of via court cases, probates, etc., but for the actual event a date might never be known.)

(And in a gedcom event detail, having a place, having a date, having a note, having a source, all of them are event details. So I believe I can have an event that consists of a source.)

So, my point is I absolutely want to record the source for it. And I have two good sources for it. I'm not lacking a marriage. I have two sources for it. Nothing more than the sources, but sometimes that's all you get.

And I want to record those sources for the marriage in the easiest way possible.

If I put a date in a block on the Main tab, that creates the event for me. I can start without a birth event. But when I enter a date in the block, a birth event is created. I was asking about something similar for when I just have a source for the event, just no details.

Let me add only a source and have the event be created for me, just like when I only give a data and/or place.

(That's what I meant when I said that I have to give a garbage date. The garbage date creates the event that I can then add the source to. The date comes right back off. Are you suggesting that without a date I should not record the fact of the marriage?)

An interesting thread: might I make a naive suggestion.
Create a Marriage event with no date and place by entering a marriage note e.g. "Date and Place Unknown".
This can be added as an extra field in the Main tab of the Family Record sheet via customizing data entry. It also, if needed, now gives you 2 items to source, the Marriage and the Marriage note.

David

Added in Edit: it occurs to me that you can do this directly with the source without going through the Note. Add a custom entry with data reference %FAM.MARR[1].SOUR[1]% and label Marriage Source. This produces a record selection box on the Property sheet allowing the selection of a marriage source which will then create an otherwise empty marriage event

David, the idea of adding a Marriage Note box for %FAM.MARR.NOTE2% on the Main tab will work, but is unnecessary as explained below.

The idea of adding a Marriage Source box for %FAM.MARR.SOUR% on the Main tab will also work well.

Stewart, a workaround is to hit the space bar twice in the Marriage Date field, then the Add Citation button will work for both existing and new Source records. Also nothing needs to be deleted from the Date field later.

The same trick works for any Date field in the Main tab, such as for Born, Christened, Died, or Buried.

Is that solution satisfactory?

Date? Why not use between (year when younger partner was 16) and (year of birth of first child/ year of death).
i.e. a Range Date.

Place? How about Wales?

tatewise wrote:Stewart, a workaround is to hit the space bar twice in the Marriage Date field, then the Add Citation button will work for both existing and new Source records. Also nothing needs to be deleted from the Date field later.

The same trick works for any Date field in the Main tab, such as for Born, Christened, Died, or Buried.

Is that solution satisfactory?

I'll give that a try, thank you. (Yes, works.)