Family Historian User Group

I have a family (husb & wife) for whom I have six Electoral Register sources, spanning approx 30 years, all resident at the same address.

Rather than enter 6 Facts, I've created one for the husband with dates "btw 1949 and 1972" and added Citations for each of the six sources. The wife has been entered using a Witness Role.

Minor problem is that in the last Register entry, their two sons have now become eligible to vote. Since I have only the one fact, a Witness Role is not really appropriate for the sons, as they were not witnesses for the first 5 sources.

A similar issue arises when an elderly parent is resident at one of the earlier interim dates - again, only present for some of the dates.

So far I have simply created Electoral Register Facts for them as Individuals. I think I prefer this to creating 6 individual Facts containing essentially the same data. Has anyone got any better suggestions?

Another similar issue (this time with Residence Facts) arises with my own parents where I have a detailed list of all the premises they lived in during their lifetime (quite a few), as it includes digs while training, temporary rented accommodation while waiting for a house move etc. During these many moves, they sometimes stayed with parents/other relatives, then of course their own children arrive and later move out at different time periods.

Ideally, a witness role might have a time period, but in that absence, how would this best be recorded? Incidentally I have no idea how these various changes of Witnesses could ever be incorporated into a sentence or reports!

I suspect individual Residence Facts would be the simple (and only realistic) solution.

I also make use of ranges for residence facts, and I very swiftly discarded the concept of witnesses for co-residents for exactly this sort of issue. For consistency, I wouldn't even enter the wife as a witness.

For children, I also give them their own Residence fact (sometimes with a date range) - my note for that fact will read something like "They were living with their parents". Conversely, the Notes for their parents' Residence facts will also mention that the children lived there over a period, ditto for any live-in grand-parents. Notes are how I "link" people at residences.

Where you have a plethora of premises, then I would have a fact for each period of residence - which might consist of a single date, unless you have really, really detailed records.

I have gone around all sorts of differents methods - at one time I had a shared note record for each address that would be linked to all the people resident there - but that produced massive repeats in reports.

Thanks for your thoughts.

For consistency, I wouldn't even enter the wife as a witness.

That seems to make sense as does

For children, I also give them their own Residence fact

It is similar to Census records, where similar options are potentially possible.
Essentially the three options are:
1) Specifically dated facts with Fact Witnesses for everyone involved on that date.
2) Period dated facts for each Individual and no Fact Witnesses.
3) Specifically dated facts for each Individual and no Fact Witnesses.
In each of those options, Source Citations work OK.