* Unrelated Individual v Witness in Census

[brianlummis]

Nick

I hope that I haven't missed something but when I started using AS, I entered everyone who was not in my project as an unrelated individual. After a few years I realised that those individuals were most probably superfluous so I changed tack and recorded them in a note.

Now we have Rich Text in FH7 it would be good if I could include them in the table which would improve the narrative. It would seem to me that the best way of achieving this would be to include them as "witnesses", and in the same way as in marriages, include the details but not add to the file.

This would save the bloat in the project if added as unrelated individuals whilst making sure they are properly recorded.

Is this possible or are there any reasons why my thinking is faulty?

Brian

[jbtapscott]

There is a recently added AS option to add an "empty" row when inputting census details. The person(s) added here are shown in the grid below and thus get included on the Source record, but no new Individual or Witness record is created within FH.

[brianlummis]

Thanks Brent, I had missed that option and may be a good workaround.

I am just trying to get it straight in my mind as to whether there is an additional advantage in having the person recorded as a Name Only (_SHAN) Witness which I believe is the case with name only witnesses in marriages.

Brian

[NickWalker]

Thanks Brent, I had missed that option and may be a good workaround.

I am just trying to get it straight in my mind as to whether there is an additional advantage in having the person recorded as a Name Only (_SHAN) Witness which I believe is the case with name only witnesses in marriages.

Brian

Witnesses are linked to facts so it isn't really clear how what you're asking would be achieved. If you had 5 individuals in the census entry and a 6th 'unrelated' individual then there would be 5 census facts (for each of the individuals) so would the Name Only witness be added/duplicated in each of those 5 facts? I don't really think this gives you any advantages over having them recorded in the source text.

[brianlummis]

I had not fully considered all the ramifications but I can see that the name only witness would have to be added to the Census fact. I don't think this would impact upon reports as the Witness Sentence is not applicable for 'name only' witnesses. They would simply be unrecorded parties to that census fact, with their roles being the relationship to the head of the household, and would act as a reminder that not all the individuals in the census entry had been fully recorded in the project. As far as I can see they would only appear in the Witnesses Window.

My thoughts were that at the moment we do record parties such as Best Man, Bridesmaids etc. as name only witnesses to a marriage if they are not already included in the project. In much the same way, shouldn't unrecorded individuals that are not wanted as part of the project but who are a party to a census entry, be recorded in the same manner?

I was prompted by the recent discussion on the Plugins for listing Name Only Witnesses and discovering that these were recorded in the project but were in effect invisible. Although I have not as yet raised this point, I then thought that it should be possible with a Plugin to check whether any of the Name Only Witnesses have subsequently found their way into the project without realising that there was already a record of them.

This all may be wishful thinking but I am just exploring the possibilities.

[tatewise]

Brian, I think Nick's point is that if there are several members of the household then each person will have an almost identical Census Event, so which Census Event gets the 'Name Only' witness, is it just the head of household or do they all get a copy?

[brianlummis]

I thought that I might be missing something, Mike. I was thinking that it would apply to each individual's census event but that may be more complicated than connecting it to the head of the household. It may well be that what I thought could be simple has its drawbacks.