Family Historian User Group

A couple of questions on Ancestral Sources,
1. When entering a family group, is it best practise to enter the wife's name as per census (generally her husband's surname) or, as I believe would be preferable, her maiden name where known. If not known, or not certain, should it be left blank or marked "Unknown"? I don't see a way to enter both.

2. Should I wish to enter a source citation, (eg. those from Evidence Explained or just copy and paste from Ancestry etc., ) is this best done in the Note field?

thanks, S

Please work through the AS tutorials such as ancestralsources:ancestral_sources_tutorial_entering_census_facts|> Ancestral Sources Tutorial ~ Enter Census Facts.

By genealogy convention in FH & AS people are usually identified by their birth name including married women.
So that is how they are selected for entry into the AS central Census Grid.
You are choosing FH Individual records with whatever Name they happen to possess..
The Auto Text is a good automated attempt at the transcript by AS.
But as advised in the tutorial and AS Help it must be manually edited to match the Source document exactly.
Not only will the names of people need to be edited but also probably occupations, places, etc.

Sorry, but I don't understand question 2.
AS will automatically create Source Citations against all the Facts it creates in accordance with the AS Options chosen and the Census Templates.
AS will also create the Source record if Method 1 is chosen.
The Auto Text will go in the Text From Source field (either Method 1 ~ Source or Method 2 ~ Citation).
Similarly the Note and Media image will be added to Source or Citation depending on Method.

If by citation you mean the Census document reference, then that would be entered in the reference/title boxes top left, so they appear within the upper fields of the Source record or Where with Source field of a Citation.
Exactly what goes where depends on the AS custom Templates and Method.
See ancestralsources:ancestral_sources_tutorial_working_with_templates|> Ancestral Sources Tutorial ~ Working With Templates.
Practise in the Family Historian Sample Project to discover what is possible.

Everyone works differently.

I use the Long Title for my Source Citation, by setting e.g. the Census Method 1 Title Template to {OTHER} and pasting the full citation (from wherever it comes from) into the Other Info Field.

I use the Short title to hold a simple identifier for the source, to make it easy to find in the FH source list -- the template I use for this is {SOURCETYPE} {YEAR} {PLACE}, {KEYPERSON}

tatewise wrote:By genealogy convention in FH & AS people are usually identified by their birth name including married women.

How you implement the above when you "meet" a woman for the first time as a married woman and may not know here maiden name requires some form of personal convention.

I use the convention that !something in some programming languages means not something - whilst also realising the something is important. So if tracing a John Jones and I find him in a census married to a Jane Jones, I will enter her as Jane !Jones - which tells me she is Mrs Jones and I have yet to discover her birth name.

In the 1841 England and Wales Census, I might not be certain whether Jane Jones is a younger wife, or the eldest daughter, so I enter her as Jane ?Jones

Using ! & ? as prefixes means that all the women whose birth names are to be reconciled get listed together. You could use them as suffixes - which would mean they get grouped with their husbands' families.

I prefer this to Jane Unknown because I do know something about her - her married surname and that it is unlikely to be her birth name.

Yes, there are various conventions where the maiden name is unknown, but most involve using the husband's surname together with other symbols, etc.
e.g.
[Jones]
Jones nee ??
or as David suggests.

Thanks all. I revisited the ancestralsources:ancestral_sources_tutorial_entering_census_facts|> Ancestral Sources Tutorial ~ Enter Census Facts and see how Rupert Childs' wife, listed in the census as Janet Childs was actually entered under her maiden name of Janet Hodges. The suggestions to enter her as Janet !Childs, Janet ?Childs, Janet [Childs] or Janet Childs nee ??? are very helpful and make sense.

When I asked about entering a source citation I was thinking of adding something along the lines of the below but now I can see that the AS template transfers much of it to the citations window of FH, though I don't see a place to add the name or URL of the database where I found the census information or when I accessed it. Perhaps I should just add that to the Notes field?

Census. 1901. England. Bayton, Worcestershire. RG13/2731. FL: 37. SN: 148. ED 12. p. 4.
http://ancestry.co.uk : accessed 24 November 2011

I've not yet started looking at the tutorials on custom templates but as I would like to use AS to add Denmark census information, I guess that's the way to go?

Thanks, S

I would add Ancestry as a Repository and enter the URL in the Repository record that has a dedicated Website field.

Assuming you create the Source Citation soon after accessing the records then the Updated date of the Source record may be good enough. Otherwise, that accessed date will have to go in the Note field.

When you have created templates for Denmark Census records then please add them to fhugdownloads:ancestralsources|> Downloads and Links ~ Ancestral Sources where you can draw on the many examples for other countries.

Some people would list Ancestry as a Publisher -- there are no easy answers.

I set my AS Title Template in AS to {OTHER} and enter the following (as an example) in Other info, but there isn't a right way to do it --

1871 census of England, Middlesex, Waltham Cross, John C Wright; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.co.uk : accessed 6 October 2016); citing Class: RG10; Piece: 1347; Folio: 75; Page:17.

AS can't generate that automatically.

The key questions are:

• *Can somebody else identify the same thing that you reviewed, to review your 'assertion' -- not the original of what you viewed, or another version in another place (which might be very different and lead them to conclude you're talking nonsense -- and hopefully tell you so) but the exact same thing?
  *Can you return to what you viewed to check what you did?

I think Helen meant to say "AS can't generate ALL that automatically."
e.g.
If
Ref ID holds such as Class: RG10; Piece: 1347; Folio: 75; Page:17 or RG13/2731. FL: 37. SN: 148. ED 12. p. 4
and
Other Info holds such as Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.co.uk : accessed 6 October 2016)
then
Title Template = {YEAR} census of {COUNTRY} {PLACE}, {KEYPERSON.FULL}; {OTHER}; citing {REF}
would come close to composing most of:
1871 census of England, Middlesex, Waltham Cross, John C Wright; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.co.uk : accessed 6 October 2016); citing Class: RG10; Piece: 1347; Folio: 75; Page:17.
and
Title Template = Census. {YEAR}. {COUNTRY}. {PLACE}. {REF} {OTHER}
would come close to composing most of:
Census. 1901. England. Bayton, Worcestershire. RG13/2731. FL: 37. SN: 148. ED 12. p. 4. http://www.ancestry.co.uk : accessed 24 November 2011

Mike, yes but you still need to populate so many fields manually that you might as well do them all in one go.

I don't disagree, but wanted to give a balanced view.

A Title Template including such as Census {YEAR} {COUNTRY} {PLACE} {KEYPERSON.FULL}
Produces the year & country & key person name fully automatically, and avoids entering the Place twice.

The rest you can append by hand into the Title box.