* entering extensive census data, ship manifests

[jmurphy]

For entering most Census data in the UK, I've been going along quite happily using Gedcom Census.

However, for the US Census in the 1900s onward, there are many 'extra' questions with information not found in a UK Census return.

I've been adding households with GC and then going into FH, turning on auto-source, and adding the rest.

I'm wondering now how I might streamline this process, either by creating fact sets, or checklists of the questions available on each census which I can copy and paste into a note.

Some of the questions are things which are already in FH or could be added in notes (for 'number of children / number of children living' I use the existing Child Count and make notes to clarify).

A similar situation exists with records from Ellis Island -- having a list of the questions on each form in order could speed up the data entry process.

I already have lists of the questions from various websites and things like the shareware Census Tools worksheets. What I'd like to discuss are your ideas for the best ways to use these with FH.

[One thing that is problematic is the parents' birthplace questions. I used to create blank parents if the parents were not known to record this data, but quit doing so since it was too confusing having a Census record as a source when the person themselves was not recorded in that Census.]

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Jan



ID:3340

[Jane]

I tend to always try to use the correct fields if they exist.

On the parents birth places as long as your source makes it clear (perhaps 'where in source' could state 'Parents Birthplace' as well as the normal references.

I always feel that if someone else can use your source reference to understand where you sourced your fact and be able to find it that has identified the source correctly.

[arishmell]

I simply add extraneous information to the bottom of the source report produced by Gedcom Census. So, having entered names, used Autotext and tidied up the entries to reflect what is recorded in the original, I add a couple more lines to show years married, number of children born/died, nationality of parents, number of rooms in house, year of immigration or whatever else is shown. Having blank parents linked to that source is then self-explanatory.