* Issue with Informant Witness for Birth Certificates

[Little.auk]

Hi Guys,

I am not sure whether this should be an AS query or an FH query.

I have created sources in AS from the birth certificates for Maria and Martha Rollin, twin daughters of Susannah Rollin (nee Whitaker). I have cited Susannah as the Informant.

The birth date from the certificates was 30 Jan 1844, and the registration date 28 Feb 1844,.

When I uploaded these sources to FH I found that they removed Susannah's "Birth of daughter" Facts and replaced them with "Was informant on the birth certificate for" Fact - The date given for this fact is the Birth date - not the Registration date, as per the attached screen dump. The Fact statement also gives the birth date, not the registration date.

The sources have also created a new residence fact for Susannah - This shows the date of registration - 28 Feb.

The image only shows the Witness fact for Martha. For Maria it shows the "Birth of" fact. I achieved this by removing Susannah's Informant Witness entry from Maria's Source. Replacing it turns the fact back to "Was informant"

As I can switch this problem off and on within FH like that, is now making me think it may be an FH issue.

[tatewise]

There are a number of factors at work there.
The first thing to understand is that none of those 'facts' exists in the Individual record of Susannah WHITAKER.
If you view her All tab, then you won't find them.
The Facts tab provides a summary listing of 'facts' from many Individual & Family records.

The Birth of daughter Martha/Maria listings are Timeline Facts and the wording is governed entirely by FH.
They show the Principal Birth Events that are recorded in the Individual records for Martha/Maria.
All the details such as Date & Place are derived from those Birth Events.

The Susannah WHITAKER was informant... listings are derived from each Fact Witness with Role Informant that is attached to the Principal Birth Event and the wording is governed by the Fact Types definition for such witnesses.
All the details such as Date & Place are derived from the Birth Events.
So that explains why the Date is the date of birth and not of registration.

In FH for any Fact, only one listing will appear in the Facts tab or in standard Reports.
That explains why the Timeline Fact and the Informant Fact Witness listings are mutually exclusive.
The same Birth Event cannot produce more than one fact listing.

Since the Residence fact is distinct from the Birth Event it can have a different Date and AS assigns the registration date.

If you desire the Informant Fact Witness event to be distinct from the Birth Event and have the registration date then that is possible by using a custom fact for that event recorded in the Individual record of Susannah WHITAKER.
I believe that AS can be customised to do that but it is very different from Fact Witnesses attached to Principal Facts.

[Little.auk]

I understand all that, but there is a major flaw here.

I do not desire the Informant Fact Witness event to be distinct from the Birth Event, but I do require that information shown is factually correct (i.e. assigning the correct date to the Informant role)!. There are enough errors and inaccuracies in genealogical data already without creating more.

Susannah is an informant at the Birth Registration - which can legally take place up to 6 weeks after the birth (and sometimes even more). Assigning the birth date to this informant role at birth registration, is not only misleading, but completely wrong, especially when the resulting Fact statement says -

"Susannah WHITAKER was informant on the birth certificate for Maria ROLLIN on 30 January 1844 in Caunton, Nottinghamshire, England.", which clearly implies that she was informant on 30 Jan - She wasn't!

Even more concerning is that this, factually incorrect, information is used in Reports e.g. as in the extract from Susannah's Individual summary Report attached.

Screenshot 2022-03-01 142436.jpg (106.35 KiB) Viewed 2798 times

I have a pile of certificates to create sources, so for now I will upload the source from AS, to get the full information into the text from source, and then edit the Witnesses to delete the Informant.

[tatewise]

You are correct in many ways but the snag is that in GEDCOM terms Fact Witnesses apply to the Fact that they witness.
All genealogy products that I am aware of work with that concept.
It is fine for Marriage witnesses, bridesmaids, etc, or Baptism godparents, but not necessarily in other scenarios.

So strictly speaking the Informant is NOT a Fact Witness to the Birth Event, but a Fact Witness to the Birth Registration Event that occurs on a different Date in a different Place completely. That can only be represented in FH/GEDCOM terms by using a distinct fact from the Birth Event. That is what other users have resorted to in order to achieve the accuracy you talk about.

The only other approach is to live with Birth Event Date & Place with Informant Fact Witness and use the Citation Date to record the Birth Registration Date which is what the Source Birth Certificate relates to.
What may also be possible is to modify the Role Sentence Template for the Informant to use the Citation Date instead of the Birth Date so it reads correctly in Reports. Does that sound like a suitable solution?

[Little.auk]

Thanks Mike,

I am actually quite happy not to have the informant fact at all, it is usually the mother or father anyway - it might be of interest if it were someone else!

AS will include it in the Text from Source for me. So, once it is uploaded to FH I can delete the informant from the witness list.

[tatewise]

So you are not interested in the sentences saying:
"Susannah WHITAKER was the informant on the birth certificate for Maria ROLLIN on 28 February 1844 in Caunton, Nottinghamshire, England."
OR
"Susannah WHITAKER was the informant on the birth certificate for Maria ROLLIN born on 30 January 1844 in Caunton, Nottinghamshire, England."

If you are happy not to retain the Informant Fact Witness, then I am happy too

[NickWalker]

Thanks Mike,

I am actually quite happy not to have the informant fact at all, it is usually the mother or father anyway - it might be of interest if it were someone else!

AS will include it in the Text from Source for me. So, once it is uploaded to FH I can delete the informant from the witness list.

In Ancestral Sources go to Tools->Settings and the Birth Settings and then untick the 'Use Witness Role for Informant' option.

Cheers

Nick

[Little.auk]

Thanks Nick,

I have now done that and also edited the Source title to show SURNAME first.

I noticed that there is an option to include {KEYPERSON.ID}, is there a way of including Custom IDs i.e. for KEYPERSON and RELATIONSHIP

[NickWalker]

No there isn't any way to include a custom ID in auto-text currently but it is a feature I could add in the future.

[Little.auk]

Thanks Nick

Re my original query. I have now created a "Birth registered" Fact and after uploading the Birth source I am manually linking it to this fact as well.

Thanks for your input.

[NickWalker]

The next version of AS will have a CUSTOMID keyword for individuals and their parents.

[Little.auk]

Nick,

strictly speaking the Informant is NOT a Fact Witness to the Birth Event, but a Fact Witness to the Birth Registration Event that occurs on a different Date in a different Place completely.

This applies to both Births and Deaths, where, unlike marriages and baptisms, the registration takes place days, weeks or (as in the case of one birth in my tree) several years after the event.

I presume that the way the Informant fact replaces the Birth of ___ fact is an FH issue, so perhaps I should raise that with them.

However, would it be feasible for AS to be able to create a Birth/ Death Registered Event for the Registration specific information (date, Informant, Registrar) and make the Informant a witness to that rather than for the Birth Fact, which does create an incorrect transcription of the Source information.

[jbtapscott]

Given that the AS AutoText has recorded details of the registration date and place (as does the actual source record image), I must admit that I overcame the issue of the registration date by modifying the sentence for the Informant such that it simply states "The Birth [or Death] of XXXX was subsequently registered by YYYY" - viz. I don't include a date as it is quite easily seen by viewing the Source record if anybody really wants that information. Okay, not an ideal solution possibly, but at least it ensures that the main information is readily visible on my website and only one click away if somebody wants to see the full detail.

[AdrianBruce]

...

strictly speaking the Informant is NOT a Fact Witness to the Birth Event, but a Fact Witness to the Birth Registration Event that occurs on a different Date in a different Place completely.

This applies to both Births and Deaths, where, unlike marriages and baptisms, the registration takes place days, weeks or (as in the case of one birth in my tree) several years after the event.
...

Just as an aside, registration of marriages in England & Wales is in the process of moving to be a separate event from the actual marriage ceremony, while in Scotland it's been like that for ages - possibly since the start of civil registration there in 1855.

[tatewise]

I am actually quite happy not to have the informant fact at all, it is usually the mother or father anyway - it might be of interest if it were someone else!

But now you appear to have changed your mind and want the full informant registration details.

As I tried to explain earlier, there is no separate Informant fact, but a Fact Witness Informant Role directly linked to the Birth (or Death) Event fact. That is the way all Fact Witnesses are implemented by all products and not just FH.

As I also explained earlier, AS can create any custom Birth/Death Registered event that you prefer, and that will be added to the Informant's Individual record with the same Source Citation as the Birth/Death Event.
See the AS Further Info tab for Associated Individuals and the related Help.
To ensure no Fact Witness is involved, the Birth/Death settings for Informant must be unticked.

[NickWalker]

Mike is correct in explaining what can be done with the associated individuals, but this won't allow a custom 'registered' fact to be added to the child (rather than the informant) with an informant witness which is what Little.Auk has suggested. It would of course be possible for me to build in an option to do this in the future if this is something that was requested by users but I think this is the first time this has been suggested.

Personally I treat the informant witness as "there was a birth on date X and the informant was person Y" - I don't need to have a separate fact to tell me when person Y registered the birth as that's in the source transcript and image. This aligns with Brent's comments above.

Cheers

Nick

[davidf]

For most individuals can we say that the "registration event" is only of interest in as much as it tells us more information about the original event being registered?

Where that is the case, I would rather amend sentences so that for instance the informant witness was "[Individual] was the informant at the subsequent registration of the [event]" (although "subsequent" is clearly redundant - if you have the right registration!). Perhaps that should be the default in the vanilla software?

As an aside: I did spend some time wondering what the actual (E&W) "Certificates" were; "Certificates of Birth" or "Certificates of Registration of Birth"? In most cases it is clearly the former (The wording varies over time and according to whether you have an original or a "True copy of an entry in a register in my custody" (Pursuant to the Births and Death Registration Act 1953) - per my mother's "death certificate" 2018 England - I don't think there was actually ever an "original certificate" for my mother' death, just "true copies" of the electronic register). The wording on originals pushes me towards not recognising the "registration" as a distinct genealogical event.

Cases where that may not hold? If the registration was significantly delayed that might tell us something about the family and may cast doubt on some of the detail. For instance, the informant's address may have changed between the birth and the registration, so if the child was born in a hospital you can no longer assume that the family's home address at the time was/is the informant's address at registration). In such cases, I would recognise the registration event as telling me something about the family at the time of registration.

[AdrianBruce]

... Where that is the case, I would rather amend sentences ...

My own personal preference is to alter the Note attached to the Birth event to say something like "The birth was registered by her mother (as usual) on DD MMMM YYYY".

There are separate Registration events in my database - the one that comes to mind is a distant cousin whose marriage record went up in smoke in the aftermath of the San Francisco Earthquake. Her husband, being a very careful chap (but apparently a really nice guy), decided to get the marriage re-registered and did so. This event was so disconnected from their actual marriage (several years before) that I felt that it was well worth recording as a separate event in its own right. But normally, when registration follows the event in the usual timescales, a note suffices for me.

IIRC the SF re-registration had its own challenges - the re-registration took place at City Hall on a certain date. That document recorded the witnesses, who were witnesses to the original marriage, and had had to sign affidavits prior to that re-registration date. So that's two dates just involved with the re-registration - and I had to get the affidavit dates clear because one of the signatories signed his affidavit and then went off to Europe before the re-registration date. I think I altered the witness sentences otherwise I'd have had the chap arriving in Europe, then mysteriously re-appearing in SF to sign off, before beaming back over the Atlantic.

Usual caveat - I don't use Ancestral Sources simply because I don't. Were I starting out anew, that might not be the case.