Family Historian User Group

Hi,

I have a custom fact that I use to make it easy for me to tell at a glance that the parents' identities have been proven with primary sources. It puts some text at the top of the property box, as shown below. The fact is associated with the child and the parents are witnesses (roles: father, mother). The problem is that the parents end up with a long litany of witness facts (see photo). While I'd like to see the parent tag on the child's property box, I don't need that info in the parents' property boxes. I've been dealing with them by shoving them to the bottom of the timeline by inserting a modern sort date.

My main question: Is there a way to suppress these witness facts in the parents' property boxes while still having them attached as witnesses? In most of my other facts, I want to see witness facts in the witness' property box, so I don't want something that hides all witness facts. I want to hide the witnesses for just this one custom fact. I prefer a global solution (i.e., never see any witnesses for this fact ever) but I'd be content with a solution where I have to individually select the fact in the witness' property box and hide them one by one.

A curiosity question: I have to change the sort date only on the first occurence of this fact on the parent's screen. Once I do that, the witness facts for the siblings automatically jump to the end as a group. I'm grateful for that but I don't understand why that happens! Anyone know why?

I have experimented with the Tools > Fact Types... definition of the Birth Event for the Father and Mother Roles hoping that the Advanced... Summary Template might somehow inhibit the witness display.
I tried {blank} and various expressions, functions & data refs without success.

You could report the problem to CP, especially as you are using their recommended method of citing parent relationships.
Otherwise, it will have to be a Wish List Request, but that won't solve your problem soon.

I'm surprised the entries have no dates. Presumably, none of the Birth Events have any Dates.

I have not yet investigated the Sort Date symptoms you described.

tatewise wrote: ↑

28 Apr 2023 11:07

You could report the problem to CP, especially as you are using their recommended method of citing parent relationships.

Actually CP recommend using the standard birth event with the parents as witnesses, whereas DJY is using a cutom fact to record the parents as witnesses. This is presumably in addition to a standard birth fact (unwitnessed) for the child.

If you use the CP method the witnessed fact appears in the propety box for the parents as birth of son nnn. If you are already displaying timeline facts in the Property Box this simply replaces the 'plain' birth of son fact with a 'witnessed' birth of son fact. So you don't get the birth fact duplicated in the parent's facts tab. However if you don't normally display timeline facts then the children's births which are witnessed will still be displayed.

I'm surprised the entries have no dates. Presumably, none of the Birth Events have any Dates.

Presumably the birth facts have dates, it's just that the custom fact does not.

I, too, use a similar custom fact but I do not link it to the parents.

I add the child's parents as Witnesses to the birth fact.

My custom fact pre-dates my usage of Witnesses but I have continued to use it as it contains the Family Record reference and the parents' names for the birth family, and, where necessary, all step-families in which the child lived. (I have some complicated family groups in my project so I found this to be the easiest way of being able to 'see at a glance' all the FAMS IDs, etc.)