* Census and residence used together

[BakerJL75]

I have been going back and forth if I want each individual to have their own census fact, or if I want the head of the household to share his/her fact with others residing there. My desire for sharing is because then you can make sentences that read John lived at 123 Somewhere with Mary, William and Jason. Individual census facts have other advantages.

What I'm contemplating now is this:

Individual census fact for each person with sentence like John was enumerated in the 1930 census, citing the census as the source.

That would be followed by a shared residence fact for the head of household: John resided at Somewhere Street. Also residing there were Mary, William and Jason, also citing the census as a source.

And optionally I could add occupation or other facts on a per person basis.

I would want to use sort dates to keep them in order. I'm not positive how well sort dates work in FH7. Would that be a problem?

Opinions on pros and cons of this?

[BillH]

Jackie,

Not sure this matters to you or not, but here goes. I have run across quite a few situations where a person is enumerated in the census at one location but resides at another location. Sometimes this is because the person is visiting another place when that place is enumerated. Sometimes it is because they seem to be working at the other location. In other words, being enumerated in the census does not imply residence.

Bill

[deckie49]

I struggled with this question for years and finally settled on the conclusion that a census is not a fact. It is rather a source document containing information about facts (residence, occupation, age,etc., etc). That has worked quite well for me over the years.

[BakerJL75]

Good point. Maybe I'll make a Census-Residence fact that says " In the census John was recorded at 123 street along with Mary, Tommy, and Joe.

[BakerJL75]

I struggled with this question for years and finally settled on the conclusion that a census is not a fact. It is rather a source document containing information about facts (residence, occupation, age,etc., etc). That has worked quite well for me over the years.

I agree. I've taken some genealogy training and they would agree too I believe.

[BillH]

I struggled with this question for years and finally settled on the conclusion that a census is not a fact. It is rather a source document containing information about facts (residence, occupation, age,etc., etc). That has worked quite well for me over the years.

I'm not sure I sould agree with this. In my training, which I admit has been limited, a different idea was put forth. A census is as much a fact as a birth. For a census, the fact is that the person was enumerated in the census. The census form is the source. This is similar to a birth, where the fact is that the person was born and "enumerated" on the birth certificate. The birth certificate is the source.

In any case you can't assume a person listed on a census resided at that address. If you have other facts that support that they did live there then that is good. I don't use a residence fact or a census-residence fact... I just use a census fact. If I find from another source that the person resided at that location I then cite that source on my residence fact which may or may not have the same date as census.

Bill

[AdrianBruce]

For what it's worth, this is my basic practice.

The census image results in the creation of a source-record for the census. I create census events for each of the (relevant) people in the household. I then create additional residence, occupation, etc, attributes for each of the (relevant) people. All those events and attributes cite the census source record. The birth events are also updated to cite the census source record.

If and when I come to produce reports for those people, I do not report the census events because, well, meh, the important thing is what they did or where they lived.

But using the census events I can run queries to see whether I've got X in the YYYY census or not. Hence, I record both census and residence etc.

Yes there are all sorts of objections to deriving a residence from a census, but in all honesty, once you take out those people enumerated in hotels, prisons, schools, hospitals, or as lodgers, visitors, boarders (I'm thinking more in terms of UK censuses perhaps), what you have left with are surely residences to within a degree of accuracy comparable with the rest of your data. (Remember lots of reports of residence are themselves problematic - take "residence" on a marriage certificate? - sometimes just a suitcase in a hall to avoid banns being called elsewhere...)

[deckie49]

I totally agree, In my thinking the census is more like a secondary source (at best), and should be considered just another piece of evidence to support the facts and help form a conclusion.

[BillH]

In my thinking the census is more like a secondary source (at best)

I would agree with this.

Bill

[BillH]

Adrian,

As is often said, different folks can do things differently. That is one of the joys of FH. We will just have to agree to disagree on which way to do it.

Bill

[NickWalker]

There are certain events in life that we create facts for.

Most people have agreed that a baptism is an important enough event for it to have a fact recorded. Of course this fact is linked to a baptism source along with other facts such as parent's occupation and residence at the time.

We've also decided that a marriage and a death is important and a burial (even though the person involved isn't alive at the time!), etc.

Why? Because in the case of many of our ancestors there aren't too many other events in their lives for which we have data to record other than baptisms, burials.

But census records are also very important because they're one of the few other events where we regularly find evidence of our ancestors and for that reason they are worthy of their own facts. Why would you decide that a census isn't worthy of a fact but a baptism is?

If all of our ancestors had regular records of when they visited the dentist then I think we'd probably create fact records for those too.

[LornaCraig]

If all of our ancestors had regular records of when they visited the dentist then I think we'd probably create fact records for those too.

That reminds me of a military form I saw once where under Distinguishing Marks it said "This man has no teeth".
That's just about all I know about him

[SimPar]

Range "facts" can be quite problematic. I lived at the same Shirley address from 1973 - 1990 and 1999-2006 but elsewhere in between. If someone failed to pick up on the intervening residencies then they could easily record me as being resident in Shirley from 1973 - 2006.

Any "fact" we record from paper documentation can only really be recorded as best available information and open to suspicion. While a baptism itself may be correctly dated I'm not sure how trustworthy abode or residence details are. Marriage register residences may also just be addresses of convenience.

We do the best we can with available information but It's a good job we don't have to stand up in a court of law to prove the information we record for our ancestors.