* Recording a negative

[sphillips]

Does anyone have any suggestions for recording a negative, e.g. X is not on the 1861 census, but he/she is on 1851 & 1871. I have a lot of people who travelled back & forth to the West Indies, & who disappear from one place without appearing in another & I know they are still alive, so I'd like to be able to record that I have checked a particular source for them. Thanks. Stella Phillips

[tatewise]

Taking your example, you could add a Census Event for 7 Apr 1861 and customise that fact appropriately.
Edit the Sentence to say He did not appear in the Census on 7 April 1861.
Add Notes &/or Source Notes/Citations recording where you have researched to come to that conclusion.

The advantage of using a standard Census Event is that for instance the Lookup Missing Census Facts Plugin won't keep offering to search for that 1861 Census record.

[David2416]

I use some Custom Facts defined as attributes with all fields ticked in working with facts dialog(except Address which I don't use).
They are Not Found meaning I haven't found an entry, Possible meaning a possible entry and Missing meaning the anticipated record is missing. There are individual and shared versions of each (s). Date, Age, Place and Note being completed as needed. I also amend the Fact Sentence if needed.

[David2416]

Having read my own post, am thinking to rename Missing to Record Missing for clarity!

[dewilkinson]

I have created a Custom Fact called Census Absence which I find satisfactory. It also enables an appropriate sentence to appear in reports. An example is given below:

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[Denis]

I suppose a simple way of doing this would be to use the standard Census event (for the reason Mike gives), but record the Place as "Nowhere". It might make the property box entry and sentence look a bit odd, but not offensively so, and would be easy to locate instances of this with a query.

[E Wilcock]

I too have people coming and going. But I need to differentiate between people apparently not in the country and people whose entry (perhaps mistranscribed) I have so far been unable to find. One also has people who avoided being listed.

If I know for sure they were not listed I use the Census tag and date it and use the memo or note field to explain.

"William and Evelyn were not listed since they were on holiday in Florence. Their three children were staying with their Sadler grandparents in Barnsley."

This was in TMG but fh must work the same. If I believe the people are listed but I cant find them I use a Custom tag called Research Notes. To say Not found and also list the districts I may have looked for them and the name variations I have searched.

[sphillips]

Thank you for your most helpful suggestions Although I've been using FH for a while, I haven't really tried to do anythng other than the standard. I'll try them out as soon as my computer is back to normal - everying has just been migrated to Onedive, Office is being up dated & I've had to get a new printer. Looking at things online is about all I can do until tomorrow!
Stella