Journeys amp; travelling relatives

zrlb · Post by **zrlb** » 02 Feb 2008 20:17

Can anyone comment on how they use passenger list info within FH?
I have 2 individuals who travelled and stayed some time in foreign parts, for work or pleasure, but did not settle so immigration/emigration is not correct. For example, one relative travelled to USA during WW1 on business, building aircraft needed for the war.
I wonder if anyone has a custom event which may help?

ID:2741

Post by **nsw** » 02 Feb 2008 23:10

I use the residence event for this kind of thing as they did live on the ship for a while.

SunnyLady · Post by **SunnyLady** » 03 Feb 2008 07:59

Whilst I agree that the emigration and imigration events are not really correct for this purpose, I do use them for travel - but then I think usage partly depends on whether you share your GEDcom file or not and whether you import others' - as I don't do either (prefering to type in the info from another GEDcom), I use events like this as I chose. The important thing is to be consistent.

I also use the residence field for the ship they travel on - which usefully revealed two different families travelling together that I had not picked up before - as I typed in the ship name it was already there ... why? ... penny drops...

zrlb · Post by **zrlb** » 03 Feb 2008 21:32

Thanks for your replies - unfortunately I also have some ancestors who did emigrate, so I don't want to use that event ambiguously.
I may need to make a custom event, or post a wishlist request for a travel event. If anyone has any more advice, I'd be glad to hear it.

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 04 Feb 2008 08:14

You would be much better creating a custom event, if you create it in a separate Fact Set you can upload it here for others to share, the whole concept behind Fact Sets was that they could be shared between users.

jmurphy · Post by **jmurphy** » 05 Feb 2008 17:34

At the moment I use the standard immigration/emmigration events, with the understanding that there may be multiple trips.

I would suggest for those who are lucky enough to be working with the later, very detailed lists for the Ellis Island arrivals, be sure to examine the columns which indicate if the person has been in the US before, and the question 'does the person intend to stay permanently'.

Those answers can be a useful in determining whether a custom travel event or the standard ones are more appropriate, if you want to distinguish them. In any case, record that information in the notes!

Note that the author of the free download Census Tools http://www.censustools.com/ also has a ship manifest sheet available (Excel spreadsheet or PDF file). I renamed his spreadsheets to templates (*.xlt) before using them so I didn't have to worry about over-writing the originals.

Jan

MDJackson · Post by **MDJackson** » 02 Apr 2008 22:41

I have a family who emigrated to Canada in the 1920's. They made several visits to the UK therafter and appear on subsequent ship passenger lists returning to Canada.
I have tried to create a custom event for 'travelled' but can find no way of adding a second place entry box so that to and from locations can be input. I can make the narative work by entering 'England to Canada' in the place field but I don't think I should use a place name consisting of two countries.
If I create an attribute instead, I can get another entry box and can use this for one of the locations, but I cannot label the box correctly as 'Travelled from' and its not really an attribute.
It would seem that one answer could be to find some way of copying the emigration event to a custom one and change the details to suit (just copying the template info. does not bring in the required data entry boxes). The emigration event has all the required fields for a travelled event, it just needs the wording changing.
Can this be done? I suspect not.
Has anyone any other ideas?

Malcolm

JonAxtell · Post by **JonAxtell** » 03 Apr 2008 08:23

Use the immigration/emigration events, but change the sentence for the specific events that are normal trips. In the property dialog click the events tab, and then click in the sentence field at the bottom of the dialog (don't worry that it's greyed out which in Windows normally indicates that a field is not clickable). You can then edit the sentence to read better for your situation. Since it's unlikely that you have many ancestors taking trips, I wouldn't think it too hard to change the sentences for a number of individuals.

A sentence can also be added in the record window by right clicking on an event and select sentence from the popup menu.

Example
{individual} travelled {date}

produces
He travelled from England to Australia in 1929.

MDJackson · Post by **MDJackson** » 03 Apr 2008 22:58

Thanks for that Jon
I would never have thought of trying to edit a greyed out box!
Works very well with narrative reports.
Not so well with Individual Summary and Family Group sheet where Family Historian uses the event title with a numeric suffix to identify the event (Emigrated [2] etc.).
In these reports it still looks as if they emigrated over and again.
But much better than my previous solutions.

Malcolm

ChrisBowyer · Post by **ChrisBowyer** » 04 Apr 2008 04:09

In defence of Simon, and to be pedantic, it's not 'greyed out', which would normally mean the text itself rather than the background is displayed in disabled text colour. But clearly it's not self evident. It might have been better to display it on standard window background if unchanged and some other colour if changed... or, I think I'd prefer a change of caption to say whether it's a scheme or custom sentence (or perhaps both).

JonAxtell · Post by **JonAxtell** » 04 Apr 2008 22:28

Many programs fail to implement greying out properly. This is gui blooper #32 in the book of the same name. Some examples include HP Laserjet drivers, Microsoft Word v6, most of Windows 98. Even FH is inconsistent about it's greying out, see child's names on the Main tab of the property dialog where the 'click here' is greyed out properly. Consistency is the key to a good UI for a program.

The other methods you mention for showing the sentence field are very good. I could also suggest a checkbox as another method of indicating if the sentence is either custom or default. It defintely needs something to let a user know that they can click it to edit the sentence.

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