Family Historian User Group

Mike (L) - the Schedule Number for UK censuses and the 1939 Register is specific to the household, not the individual. I also include the Schedule Number in the source Publication Information (but not the media file name) as it is both a useful prompt for where to find the entry on the page, and in rural areas with no house numbers the only way of distinguishing between different households on the same page.

Mark,
Point taken, I was confusing schedule with Line number.
Personally, I use just enough to identify the unique page, which of course could be (and is) used by more than one household. Even with a full page, II have no dificulty finding who I want

Another little question not worth a new thread. What are the little coloured dots and arrows for on the facts tabs? Is there a key to them somewhere?

Blue dots for Individual Facts
Red dots for Family Facts
Arrows for Witness Facts

Thank you. What do you call them? I tried to look the answer up myself in the Help pages but didn't know what to look for.

I don't think they have a generic name and the FH Help does not seem to explain those coloured icons.
See glossary:property:events_tab|> Property Box Dialogue: Individuals: Facts Tab that gives a better description.

Thanks, Mike. That's added a bit more knowledge for me.

If you search FH Help for "dots", one of the Topics is the (relevant) "Property Box: Facts tab" which includes:

blue dots for Individual records and red dots for Family records

Ah! Such a simple solution

I missed that as it is well hidden, but it does not explain the grey dots (Timeline Fact) or the blue arrows (Fact Witness).

Another quickie question please

I'm trying to tidy my rather muddled and inconsistent list of sources. Is there any particular reason to keep the BMD sources listed as two sources for each - with the two date spans - or could I just merge them to something simpler such as GRO birth register, GRO death register and GRO marriage register?

Personally, I’d treat them as one single source for each Birth, Marriage or Death. Out of interest, both the GRO and FreeBMD do not use different date ranges.

Thanks, Mike, that’s reassuring. I couldn’t see any good reason to treat the separately but didn’t want to lump them together without checking.

FTM is perfectly happy lumping certificates and index entries together under these generic headings (i.e. where you have a certificate, it is just a citation with a lot more detail), but in FH it is probably best to split out certificates as individual sources in their own right. This is analogous to the earlier discussion on census entries, where FH is not very good at handling detailed citations from a high level source.

I seem to remember that the split in your sources is due to the dates at which the indexes were gradually put on line.

They would also indicate whether or not the maiden name of the mother was in the original birth index, and was thus for the first time, also provided on line.
Initially the on line versions had to be paid for on subscription sites, which encouraged the communal effort at free BMD. Since all these were transcripts, my own feeling is that proper genealogists would retain the original sources. Keep what you noted in the past.
When I change software I dont tidy up or alter things to get uniformity.
Those of us old enough to have used the big paper volumes will know too that the early years are handwritten, so one might even require a page image.

Yes, use the Edit > Merge/Compare File command to merge those pairs of GRO Index source records.
They are using the Method 2 'lumper' Source Citation mode that is good for these sources.
glossary:method_2_source_lumpers_mode|> Method 2 'source lumpers' mode

But as Mark says, when you add BMD Certificate Sources, create a separate Source record for each one, which is the recommended Method 1 'splitter' Source Citation mode for such detailed sources.
glossary:method_1_source_splitters_mode|> Method 1 'source splitters' mode

Not just hand-written registers - some of the image files used for transcribing were of rather dubious quality, leading to errors and inconsistencies. However, it depends on what your end objective is. Do you want everything researched to "proper" standards designed to stand up to legal challenge, or are you documenting a hobby interest? There is no right or wrong answer to that question, it's down to the individual.

On Ancestry, the births are still shown in two catalogues with different date ranges(1837-1915) (1916-2007), FreeBMD mimics Ancestry, whereas on FMP they are both under the one catalogue(1837-2006). I use all 5 births as separate (Lumped) sources to show where I got the info from although I do now prefer to use the GRO Online index.
You would imagine that all the indexes should match, but they don't.

tatewise wrote: ↑

16 Aug 2020 09:26

Yes, use the Edit > Merge/Compare File command to merge those pairs of GRO Index source records.
They are using the Method 2 'lumper' Source Citation mode that is good for these sources.
glossary:method_2_source_lumpers_mode|> Method 2 'source lumpers' mode

But as Mark says, when you add BMD Certificate Sources, create a separate Source record for each one, which is the recommended Method 1 'splitter' Source Citation mode for such detailed sources.
glossary:method_1_source_splitters_mode|> Method 1 'source splitters' mode

This is pretty much what I have been doing. Where I have a certificate I am making a separate source and attaching an image. Where they are people close to the main branches, I am getting a birth year and quarter from the GRO indexes and adding the Vol and page number and any other information as notes in case I want to follow them up later. Where they are a bit more distant I am just getting the year from the GRO and adding a lumped source 'GRO birth indexes'.

So, apart from the fact that the dates might relate to whether the MMN might be available, they might as well all be merged as Birth, Marriage and Death indexes.

Mark, I am certainly not aiming for professional standards. I want something that is tidy and consistent so that when my brain fails and I can't remember what's what, I will be able to see clearly where information came from and my children and grandchildren will be able to make sense of it too, when they finally start to be interested long after I am gone!

Thanks, all.

FreeBMD mimics Ancestry

Not strictly true - the earlier indexes on Ancestry are FreeBMD. That is why they are free to search. My experience of the GRO’s own on-line indexes is that while they contain useful additional information, I have multiple examples of entries missing altogether from the GRO versions. Unfortunately, the GRO search engine is not as flexible as those of other indexers, so entries are more likely to be missed if wrongly transcribed.

You could argue that FreeBMD is the “gold standard”, with two completely independent transcriptions, both largely done by native English speakers familiar with our names, and verifiable against an image of the original index page. Unfortunately, that still doesn’t eliminate errors in the index itself...

When I said FreeBMD mimics Ancestry (Maybe should be other way around), I was referring to the naming convention of the Index with years (And the split at 1915-1916), not the actual content.

Do FreeBMD actually maintain two datasets? They certainly did the earlier ones first (and these seem to be the sets Ancestry use), but they don’t seem to distinguish in their results between earlier and later extractions.

There also seems to some kind of agreement between the GRO and FMP, as the extra details are apparently starting to appear in FMP searches. FMP seem rather less open than Ancestry about the original source of their data, so it is difficult to tell whether something is just a licensed copy of somebody else’s dataset or an independent extraction.

One thing that has changed on Freebmd, is the original images. These used to be the original handwritten ones, now they appear to be typed transcriptions of the originals! Yet another area for mistakes to creep in. What was wrong with the original handwritten ones? Where did they go?

As far as I am aware the FreeBMD original images are still the originals and still handwritten.
I have just now looked and found handwriten ones.