* Best way of writing 'narratives'?

[Ebor337]

Oh, just another quick question that has been bugging me a little bit...

How is the bets way to write 'narratives' for the individuals in your family tree. There are some 'events' that can't be pigeon holed into an existing attribute but I would like them to appear on the individual reports.

For example, I want to add this to my reports:

At some point after 1911 then, he moved to Tockwith and lived for the rest of his life, was employed as a Drayman where he would deliver supplies from Woods Bros shop in Tockwith, and then for G.W. Todd until his retired in around 1946, aged 65. His job would entail him collecting the produce as it came in on the train at Cattal and in ships from Skeldergate and North Street in York. The latter place saw Stephen lose 3 fingers from his right hand in an accident with a saw.

or

He died in 1976, aged 94, as the oldest man in the village.

The above two are taken from his obituary in the paper so is there a way to add the media to his person?

Thanks so much again.

ID:3868

[Jane]

There are several different ways to do this.

You can attach the Obit as a source and add the image to that. This is what I do. Adding the exact content in the text from source.

For the death event you could edit the sentence for him in the Facts tab to add the bit about oldest man in the village.

Personally the rest I would put into the relevant fields, so occupation with a note for the details for his work for G.W Todd and a residence event for moving to Tockwith.

[Ebor337]

Thanks so much for your help, Jane. I really do appreciate it.

Thanks again.

[Ebor337]

Just thought I'd bump this up as I have discovered an ancestor's WW1 service record on ancestry.

I am just wondering what would be the best way of putting in all the information into a narrative? There is a LOT of information and using the facts/attributes just wouldn't be practical.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

[ChrisBowyer]

Jane said:For the death event you could edit the sentence for him in the Facts tab to add the bit about oldest man in the village.

I generally treat changing the sentence as a last resort (partly because it won't be recognised by any other Gedcom program, and partly because it's clumsy to do on an individual basis), so I changed the fact set templates so they include the note field. That gets you sentences like 'He died on ... in ... with his boots on', or '... lived in ... with his widowed mother' by adding the extra clause in a fairly natural way as a note to the event.

[ChrisBowyer]

Ebor337 said: There is a LOT of information and using the facts/attributes just wouldn't be practical.

I agree... Adding custom events for height, weight, visible scars, chest expansion, etc is all possible, but even if you can be bothered to set up all the templates, the resulting narrative reports will be a bit of a mess. I do it as I said above with notes on the event, probably the occupation in this case. It also works nicely for when you have additional information on occupations like who they worked for and so on from the 1911 census.

[Ebor337]

Chris Bowyer said:
I do it as I said above with notes on the event, probably the occupation in this case. It also works nicely for when you have additional information on occupations like who they worked for and so on from the 1911 census.

Thanks for your input Chris, very intersting and a good solution. I'm still discovering the nuances of FH so many thanks.