Family Historian User Group

I have used Family Origins/Rootsmagic for many years and have now moved to FH mainly because of the abilty to select faces on photos etc.

Rootsmagic allowed media to be attached to all events and I used this for certificates and census events but FH3.1 did not recognise the links.

I tried GEDCOM Census but this attached the media to the source record not the census event.

In FH4 the links started working ok!

Now does GEDCOM Census attach media to the source because thats the best way or because it was the only way in FH3?.

In Rootmagic I had one source for each census year and linked all my records to that and attached a media record to the head of household.

In FH3/4 each census record has its own source.

I am unsure which is the best way to proceed and before making numerous changes (for consistency purposes)I would appreciate any advice on this subject.

ID:3779

I believe that media such as census images are best attached to the corresponding Source record (e.g. by Gedcom Census) since this provides the same link to the image from the Individual's Census Event for all relevant Individuals, via the Source Citation. I have many examples where family members in my tree were servants or lodgers in various census records, and in such cases the head of household would not be in my tree at all, so linking the image to the head of household would not be an option.

In my opinion, certificates and census forms are best attached to the source as that is what the image is of. My method is to create a lots of sources, e.g. rather than one source for 1851 census I will create a separate source for every family's census entry.

A birth certificate is a source of information and details more than just the date and place of birth of an individual. If the birth certificate was linked to the birth event of the individual, the parents records would not have any link to the certificate. Even a photo of a gravestone is a source of information and a source record could be created for it, and the gravestone photo linked to it. If an image is a scan of a form, and the form is a source of information the source is the record the image should be linked to. Only if an image is specifically related to a person, such as a portrait, or is not an actual source of information but just additional background info such as a place, then the individual's record or a specific event is OK.

I would also recommend attaching census images to the source rather than the person, but if you really want to you can attach census images to the census events in FH4, but not I think in GedCom Census.

Thank you all for your comments.

I had already started the process of re-entering census events using the excellent GEDCOM census program but the numbers involved (several hundred)and the introduction of FH4 made me wonder if I was wasting my time!

I will now continue to add media to the census source record rather than the event even though FH4 does support both methods.