* Witness Entries - More Detail?

[vikingalchemy]

I am using the witness function to record a group of people at a particular address from a census record using the resident label.

This is fine as far as it goes. However, I was hoping to have in the narrative reports the ability to output something like e.g. " John Smith lived at 12 Acacia Drive with his wife Dorothy Smith, his daughter Mary Smith and a lodger John Brown"

It would be particularly handy where there are similar names in the same household e.g Father and son with same first name.

[tatewise]

There is more to your question than meets the eye.

It is more conventional to capture all the Census details in a Census Event where the Address and Place fields identify the address where the Census was taken rather than a Residence fact.
There are also advantages in having a separate Census Event for each household member as explained in more detail in the how_to:recording_census_records|> Recording from a Census Record. The use of Fact Witnesses is popular but has several drawbacks.

However, maybe you are talking about a Residence fact in addition to the Census Event.
In order to get the relationship to the Head of Household you could assign a Role to each Fact Witness.
To see examples of that, inspect the Marriage Event which has Roles for Best Man, Bridesmaid, Witness, Minister, etc.
Use Tools > Fact Types, select the Marriage Event, click Edit and review the Sentence Template and the Roles.
So every time you come across a new relationship you will need to create a new Fact Witness Role.
Alternatively, you might be able to save the relationship in the Fact Witness local Note field.
See how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates that goes into details.

What some users prefer is to construct exactly what they want to appear in Narrative Reports in a Note and include that Note text in the Sentence Template, which gives you much more scope to get the wording exactly how you want it. For example, by default, married women will automatically be given their maiden Surname in Reports even when they are married in the Census record. But in a Note you can use whatever surname you prefer.

Many of the above topics are discussed in the posting Use a single census entry for whole family (17692) despite its slightly misleading subject title.

When you have investigated further, we can explore your preferred options in detail.

[vikingalchemy]

Thanks again Mike.

Phew, there certainly is more to it than meets the eye

I will need to go through this step by step and see what's going to be the best option.

I had actually started off by recording the "event" as you suggest and then doing the "residence" part separately. For the second part, I followed the video tutorial on the witness function which, at the end (after a wedding scenario and a will scenario) explains how to connect people with a "resident" role. However, This only gave me the list of people which is better than nothing but not as nice as having their relationships as well, which is particularly helpful when there are duplicate names in the family

As you say, I think I need to explore the other options you have mentioned to see if I can find a suitable method.

Cheers.

[tatewise]

One point to consider is that the address shown in a Census record is not necessarily the person's normal Residence because they may just be visiting on that day, or in temporary lodgings, or a live-in servant, etc.

Why do you need to see the relationships between the members of the household?
If you want them included in published Narrative Reports, then the Sentence Template technique is best.
If you just need them to help with your research, then a click on the Source Citation link displays the Source record whose Text From Source transcript should include the relationships from the Census, or a click on the Show Media button allows the Census media image to be displayed. Both those can also be included in any type of Report in the Sources section.

[vikingalchemy]

Hi folks,
I am still wrestling with my census entries and witness feature.

I am about to abandon altogether using the witness feature for Census info. My main question is - Am I missing out
greatly by NOT linking the individuals together in this way? As a newbie to FH, I'm not sure how this will impact in general
with other aspects of the program e.g records, lists, searches etc.

I had already decided to not record both a residence fact as well as a census fact and had managed to change the auto generated sentence to suit my needs in the narrative reports for the census entries. My problem is with the married names in the houshold of which I have no record (only the maiden names). As a consequence the witness statement isn't quite accurate. I had thought about creating a second entry for the same person using the "add name only" function when populating the witness box but again, I'm not sure if this will prove messy and end up with confusion in the individual record lists.

Any thought and advice welcome.

[tatewise]

Remember, how_to:recording_census_records|> Recording from a Census Record gives the pros and cons.

Assuming you have one Source record for the Household then all the members will have a Census event with a Citation of that Source. Then it is easy from any one of those Citations to find the Source record and then find all the Citations linked to that Source record. That will list not only all the household member Individual records, but also each fact such as Census, Occupation, and Birth. This is the way the majority of users handle Census, and it is much the same for many other Sources such as BMD Certificates that involve the principal Indiviudals, the BMD Event, Occupation, Residence, and sometimes other facts.

In genealogy, women are always referenced by their Birth Surname. It affects much more than just Census and impacts Divorce, 2nd Marriage, Occupation, Will, Death, and any other married life activity. So Reports, Diagrams, etc, always use the maiden name unless you go to great lengths to alter it.

[vikingalchemy]

Thanks Mike,

I have now sorted my strategy with the knowledge of how most users approach it.

I think I was perhaps trying to overcomplicate the process.