Family Historian User Group

Hi Nick. I have started using Gedcom Census and it is a great addition to FH, but I can't help wondering why a person's age is copied to the census attribute but not to the occupation attribute. Is there a reason?
It may be too late for suggestions if you are about to beta the next version, but an option to copy age to occupation would be useful.
Thinking about it, more options for what to copy where would be useful as everyone seems to have a different method of doing things.
For instance, you could also have the options of not copying census place to occupation, and for the auto text to not insert 'Scholar' when it hasn't been entered as an occupation.
Thanks again for a great program.

ID:1635

Hi Shaun

Not copying age to the occupation is a deliberate decision, though admittedly one which could be an option. Census age is very often inaccurate but is recorded with the census event obviously. The census records an occupation and so this requires an occupation attribute to do so but there is no reason to record the possibly inaccurate age for a second time. i.e. the age is a feature of the census not of the occupation.

Again the census does not record the address that a person works and so generally this can't be recorded in the occupation. However, it is most likely that they work in the same place (town/village) and so I record that. I agree it could be an option.

I would personally never record scholar as an occupation and so your auto-text feature wouldn't work for me but it could be option.

Thanks for the ideas. None of them would take too long to add, but each does of course delay the next release a little.

Nick

What a quick reply! Your explanations make perfect sense. I agree that census ages are often inaccurate, but for me the occupation attribute should record the age as stated in its source, which is the census!
I think the use of census place for occupation is tricky. I don't like to make assumptions that I may later come to forget were assumptions. How big of an assumption it is depends on the nature of the job. I like to decide on a case-by-case basis.
Regarding the autotext - I didn't mean that the occupation field should be automatically filled based on age, but that the source text shouldn't be (optionally). GC's autotext inserts 'Scholar' into the source text based on age, but in my (limited) experience this is often not recorded in the census.

The autotext is only ever meant to be a guess and in my experience I have never found that it exactly matches the census record, I always have to edit it. The best guess it can make is to put the scholar in because it is most likely that they are recorded as scholars (more often than not in my experience). All I'm trying to do is save time in transcribing. However, I'm happy to make it an option.

I expect the autotext saves a lot of time on the whole. The first censuses I entered had a lot of children and a profound lack of scholars, which is probably the only reason I suggested the option. I'm not complaining in any way - just suggesting tweaks. I thought that if anyone else also wanted these options, you might consider them, I wasn't trying to get you to modify the program just for me!

No don't worry, half of the options in Gedcom Census have been added due to requests from just one or two people. I want Gedcom Census to suit as many people's requirements as possible and if the requests are not difficult to add I do like to implement them.

Nick

All though i don't use Gedcom Census, can i just add a reason as to why Ages should not be recorded against occupations.
If Person is say a Farmer in 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881 Census. You would surely only ever have one Occupation Attribute but you cannot have an age as what age would you put there. I.e. have multiple ages per attribute but for a census attribute you can only have one age (i.e. age as recorded on census).

Hope this makes sense.

Tim

Hi Tim,
That depend's on what you are recording. I use multiple occupation attribute's as they are the facts record on a census, or BMD Certificate. The only infomation that you truely have is that on that one day, the person was listed as doing occupation x. You can assume the if they do that same occupation over multiple attributes then they did it all the time, but i have certainly seen reference to the fact that for most people occupations like Ag lab were seasonal, so how do you know what they did during other times ?
I am not saying that what you do is wrong, it just about how you record & interpret the data and wouldn't life be boaring if we all did it the same [grin]

Richard

I'm updating some of the old Gedcom Census related threads now that version 5.1 has been released.

The new Gedcom Census 5.1 has options so that you can decide whether or not the age of an individual and the census places are recorded within the occupation attribute created for census records. There is now also an option to not insert scholar when using auto-text unless it has been specified as an occupation.