Family Historian User Group

At the moment when an address is entered for the Principal to a witnessed event that address is displayed in the address field for the witness roles when clearly that individual lived elsewhere. Thus, A makes will which is witnessed by B. A's address (where entered) is displayed as B's address. Entering a Residence Fact is a way round it but it would be more elegant if FH allowed all witness roles to have their individual address recorded.

I'm not understanding why a Residence fact isn't appropriate, if you know the witness's residence at the date of the relevant fact.

The address/place field displayed when you view the witness role is the address/place of the event not of the principal or the witnesses. So, you usually create a residence field for the principal if you have that information -- why not be consistent and do it for the witnesses as well?

I agree with Helen.

My concern is that any witness may have two place and address pairs relevant to an event - the address etc where the event takes place, and the address etc where the witness is resident.

Suppose W is a (real life) Witness at the wedding of X and Y and the marriage documents give the residences of all the parties, witnesses included. On W's property box, there will be a list of events and attributes, one of which says (in English) W was a Witness at the wedding of X and Y - there is a place and address pair against that event, which tell the reader where the wedding took place. That is vital and can't be lost (especially if W has come a long way for that wedding).

W's residence simply has to be recorded as another event, with the separate place and address pair.

I can sympathise with the desire to streamline the capture of data from such a form but would suggest that it should be a different beast - some form of Data Entry Assistant??? - rather than cramming more info the witness form.

It would also be a challenge to represent such address & place information in GEDCOM.
The de facto _SHAR.ROLE structure and the formal GEDCOM 7.0 ASSO.ROLE structure has nowhere reasonable to hold such information.