Marital status on census

philjo · Post by **philjo** » 04 Dec 2006 13:23

Is there a way to record the Marital status from Census entries via Gedcom Census?

I don't usually record this for single/married people, but I do find that it is useful to record this information where the person concerned is a widow/widower, as it is often found from using this information that their spouse has died during the 10 years since the previous census.
At the moment, I put this into a Note field for the relevant census event for that person.

Jeremy

ID:2013

ChrisBowyer · Post by **ChrisBowyer** » 05 Dec 2006 17:59

We would record this as a death of the spouse, (e.g. died before 1871), with a source reference to the census.

Post by **NickWalker** » 05 Dec 2006 22:33

Marital status can be recorded in the Source Text as usual but Gedcom Census doesn't have a facility to create an event to record death of a spouse. It would be a bit of an add-on to do this as the person who died obviously isn't one of the people you have selected for the census.

It is a fairly easy process to just go into family historian, add a death event to the person and link to the census source that was created by Gedcom Census.

philjo · Post by **philjo** » 07 Dec 2006 13:15

Nick,

Thank you for your suggestion.

I'll continue to put a note in the source record for the person listed as a widow, then put a date of death with a 10-year range for the spouse until I find their actual death/burial details.

Jeremy

Tombaston · Post by **Tombaston** » 08 Dec 2006 07:26

When using the census as a source for a death event I change the certainty assessment from Primary Evidence to Questionable. It doesn't prove their death. I have at least one bigamous ancestor where his first wife records herself as a widow when he is living with a second wife ten miles away.

ChrisBowyer · Post by **ChrisBowyer** » 08 Dec 2006 07:41

We have a few recorded as 'wife' when we know they're not married... But are censuses ever Primary?... they are after all the enumerator's interpretation of the householder's form, often (apparently) filled in by the children if they went to school and the parents probably didn't. Personally I never bother with assesments. I think the important thing is to record the source, and let anyone else make up their own mind about the reliability of it.

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