* One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

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paulrun26
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One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by paulrun26 »

Hi

Does anyone else use FH for just one person? i.e. I'm considering detailing my grandads WW2 service in FH as a separate file - the reason being I can keep all sources, records and citations along with photos all together and easily linked, rather than scattered in files on my pc ( I know I still have to keep them somewhere), or, within my general FH family history; I'm thinking I can possibly link the person in different Gedcom files?

Would appreciate to know what others do or don't do - or is there a better way.

Thanks

Paul.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by AdrianBruce »

I'd be inclined to just look at having a Word document linking to the other files, then you're not hidebound if you want to define the "sources" at different levels, etc. Word? HTML? Even a spreadsheet with lots of text? I think you do need the linking aspect in there somehow to go from one bit to another?
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by tatewise »

I'm thinking I can possibly link the person in different Gedcom files?
There is no way of linking together records in different GEDCOM files. They have to be self-contained.

If your grandad is already linked into your existing FH main family project, then why not link in everything there?
You can pull it together in an FH Book &/or use the linked records as the basis of a separate word-processed document.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by paulrun26 »

Thanks for the help thus far.

I have decided that I want to create a single Project detailing my grandfathers wartime service. I have created (for now), just the one name and each item I own becomes a source, with a photo attached to it. E.g his playbook is a pdf attached to the source and a photo of the cover. Other sources I have are a small map of Italy and one of North Africa, small leave papers giving permission etc, along with photos, and of course, his medals and ID discs.

My question here is , I have a small pocket diary for 1942 which I would like to transcribe within FH and particularly the source itself - if I were to create a Note for each entry, (within Notes in the Source), what problems might I face later, when say, trying to reference a particular day somewhere else - making a citation?

How would I avoid including the whole transcription if I were to include that source, say, when compiling a book.

I’m currently on version 5 but looking to upgrade when 7 is released.

Thank you.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by Jane »

paulrun26 wrote: 04 Jan 2020 08:32 My question here is , I have a small pocket diary for 1942 which I would like to transcribe within FH and particularly the source itself - if I were to create a Note for each entry, (within Notes in the Source), what problems might I face later, when say, trying to reference a particular day somewhere else - making a citation?

How would I avoid including the whole transcription if I were to include that source, say, when compiling a book.
Personally I would add a note for each entry and head each one with the Entry Date.

When citing you can simply use the Where with in Source referencing by entry date, that way anyone reviewing your information can easily find the correct note. By default notes attached to sources are not included in an source list, but you could always include a snippet of the entry in the Text from Source field for the citation.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by tatewise »

There are several mentions of a "Note for each entry", but that presumably means using the Source record Note box to hold the entire transcription of the pocket diary, but with clear headings such as a date to identify each relevant section.

It is possible to enclose any text in the Text From Source box or Note box within [[ privacy square brackets ]].
That enclosed text will be exclude from Reports unless Report Options > Contents > Inc. [[private]] Notes is ticked.
Despite saying Notes, that option applies to any long text field such as Text From Source and Address.
So with that technique you can have the entire transcript as searchable text, but only include a subset in Reports.

A consequence of having differing Citations for one Source record (as suggested by Jane) is you will get an Ibid. entry for all but the first one in the Sources section of Reports, and although the Source record text only appears against that first entry, if a Media image is attached to the Source then that will get repeated in each Ibid. entry.
However, this technique only includes the Text From Source (or Notes) once per Report.

A variant on all the above is to put the entire transcript in [[ privacy square brackets ]] so it is excluded from Reports by default, and have a separate Publish > Miscellaneous Reports > Source Summary Report just for those long transcript cases with Inc. [[private]] Notes ticked to include everything.

So I recommend you experiment with these suggestions and investigate how Reports appear with different options before committing to a final strategy.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by Valkrider »

For doing the transcribing take a look at Genscriber or Transcript. Both are free and may make the transcribing easier.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by tatewise »

Colin, I guess they are not so useful if you have a physical item such as a pocket diary?
Also FH V7 with its word-processing features will import more faithfully from such utilities?
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by Valkrider »

Mike
They are good if you have scans as you can have the scan on one half screen and do the transcription in the other half. Paul said he was going to create images / pdf's from some of his physical sources so they could work for him. There is no need to use the templates in either product you can just do freeform text. It is how I transcribe my wills. Both run under Wine / PlayOnMac / Crossover so can be used on a Mac.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by paulrun26 »

Thanks all
Jane & Mike thanks for the extra info - I'm not that familiar with FH so expected some T&E (trial and error :lol: ).

Colin, thanks I will look at that - the diary doesn't have a that many entries and I've somewhat learnt grandads handwriting, although he was a cook, and I have his training cook books and there is some text that I cannot read so I will check those out.

Bye for now but I might be back with more questions.
Paul
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by paulrun26 »

So I'm happy with my One person tree so far, and grateful for the advice. Sources has started will and I can start to see a few results when I've played around with source reports, queries etc and seem to get the results I want - the 'book' seems something I can deal with too. Mike, thanks for the discussion on [[ privacy square brackets ]] - that was new to me; now I know.
I've not started on the diary yet I'll leave that till I'm in the mood for it.

Next question is about photos. Photos as a source, with multimedia attached (as there may be a requirement to have a copy of both sides of the photo), or is it more efficient to keep all the notes to the photo directly within the multimedia window?

Does that make sense? I would like to have a photo as the source and attach the actual picture to it and keep all the info within the source - would that be the better way?

Paul
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by tatewise »

I think you are saying you have photos of people/places with writing on the back providing names, events, dates, etc.
Treat them the same as any other Source document image (BMD Certificate, Census Return, etc).
The Source record Text From Source holds the transcript of the writing, and the Media tab links to two Media records for the front and back of the photo respectively.

But again it partly depends on how & where you want the material to appear in Reports.

The Note box text in Media records doesn't appear in any Reports apart from the Media Report.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by paulrun26 »

Thanks - I'd added that as a Note rather than 'Text from Source' - makes sense now, I'll still keep the second photo as attached media to the source as I like to see Grandads handwriting.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by tatewise »

Maybe you have already realised, but any form of information that supports facts can be a Source record.
Mostly GRO BMD Certificates & Census records, or Church Parish records, but also interviews (with audio recordings), newspaper reports, newsreel videos, dates on the flyleaf of a Bible, personal diaries, etc.
Although, audio/video recordings can't be printed in a paper book, they can be included on a DVD with a PDF book that refers to them.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by paulrun26 »

Mike, thank you I did but that serves as a reminder.

So my one person tree, researching grandad's war service is going well and is taking shape as I would like it. One more conundrum for me - I previously mentioned transcribing a small diary, doesn't have many entries but they do contain some important details. I'm not sure that adding a note for each day is going to work better - I'm thinking here, the end product, what do I want the transcription to do? Adding a note (within the diary record), for each day - looks ok in a report. Or, do I just transcribe the whole thing into one note, I was wondering what control I might have over that?
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by paulrun26 »

So, my next issue.... Is it a source, Local Note or a Record Source?
The 4th Infantry Division were part of the 1st Army, so, I would like to record within FH a timeline and an overview with links to sources, multimedia and citations etc. Within the paramaters of FH and the fact that it is a geneaology programme I'm not too sure what to do here. If it were a person - no problem. But as an army , if I add as a Record source Note (preferred option with least other options), than I can just add text , and no links. Is it correct to term it a source?(I don't think so), I could write it all up in a Word doc. or.pdf but would prefer all that type of information together.

Any thoughts?
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by davidf »

If you are going outside the "normal" use of FH you could set up a Family (in a separate project - don't mix with conventional families!) that looks something like:

Great Great Great Grandfather: British Army
Great Great Grandfather: XX Corps
Great Grandfather: 31st Division
GrandFather: 94th Brigade, GrandMother: York and Lancaster Regiment
Father: 14th Battalion Y&L
Individual: Soldier

(If the individual moves between units you can add an "excess" number of parents (family as child) through the "All" tab.)

The various War Diaries for instance are all different sources.
You can create facts at the appropriate level e.g.: Fact: "Battle", Dates: Frm 1st July 1916 to 18th November 1916, Place: Somme, France
The fact will exist in all the relevant entities, but will be sourced to the relevant entity's war diary (either lumping the whole diary e.g. WO95/2365 (Repository: TNA) and citing the relevant pages, or treating each page as a separate split resource - which I would not recommend - others might!)
If you do a transcription, add the relevant transcription as a "text from source" for the relevant event.

Sometime though a Word Document (with academic style citations and referencing) is easier!
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by tatewise »

So presumably your grandfather was in the 4th Infantry Division of the 1st Army.

The key question is do you want his wartime story intertwined with the deployment of the 1st Army, or do you want a separate story line dedicated to the 1st Army.

If the former, then you need to add Facts to your grandfather's Individual record supported by Source records in the conventional way, such that his Narrative Report tells his story against the backdrop of 1st Army action.

If the latter, then experiment with an Individual record named 1st Army and see how it goes.
See what custom Facts you might need to describe the deployment of the army in various theatres of war.
The Sentence Templates for those custom Facts will have a different style, such as using It instead of {individual}.

Other users may have alternative ideas.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by paulrun26 »

All is going well at present; rather slow as too many other life-things get in the way. I'm working on the book at the moment and have a small problem with my 'Chapter 1' page on grandad - I have a list of Attributes and Events, just as I want them, I have an Individual Note, a short narrative, that's OK, however:-
  • I'd like to swap their order so that I have his name and a photo first, Individual Note second, and finally, Attributes and Events last.
  • Then, when the sources are listed at the end, that's fine - I can't work out how to eliminate the photos that accompany them.
Thank you, Paul
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by tatewise »

I guess you are talking about an Individual Summary Report in Chapter 1 of your Book.

In Report > Options > Contents > Main Section Items select Notes item, click Edit, and choose Show if not empty.
Or from the Book, select Chapter 1, use Settings > Contents > Main Section Items as above.

Back in the Contents tab, untick Individual Record Notes on the left.

In Report > Options > Sources tab, untick both Show Source/Citation Pictures on the right.
Or similarly in Book, use Book Settings > Sources tab, but that applies to whole Book.
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Re: One person tree - Recording war service with all the bits that go with it!

Post by paulrun26 »

tatewise wrote: 10 Feb 2020 21:30 I guess you are talking about an Individual Summary Report in Chapter 1 of your Book.

In Report > Options > Contents > Main Section Items select Notes item, click Edit, and choose Show if not empty.
Or from the Book, select Chapter 1, use Settings > Contents > Main Section Items as above.

Back in the Contents tab, untick Individual Record Notes on the left.

In Report > Options > Sources tab, untick both Show Source/Citation Pictures on the right.
Or similarly in Book, use Book Settings > Sources tab, but that applies to whole Book.
Spot on as ever - thank you, took me a while but simple when you know; must have saved me a week! Paul
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