* Best way to input information

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GeneSniper
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Best way to input information

Post by GeneSniper »

Hi all,

I was just thinking while re-doing my tree, what is the best order to input my information? I ask this because I am putting in information that I have already researched and wondered starting from myself is it best to branch out in all directions (myself, wife, children, sisters, brothers and there kids aunts and uncles etc) and move back from there or is it easier to start at myself run up my direct family tree and then pad it out with other family members after this is done then say my wife and her direct family then pad that out. I can see advantages to doing it both ways and are you better adding BMD certs at the same time or births first to get the basic information in then go back and add the rest?

WF
William

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tatewise
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by tatewise »

Hi William. I've moved this to the FH General Usage Forum that is more appropriate.

The order you enter things is more to do with which Source Documents you are capturing.

If you have a set of Birth Certificates then they will apply to the person being born and their parents.
Marriage Certificates apply to bride and groom and their fathers and witnesses.
Whereas Census Records will apply to a wider family group including siblings and possibly other relatives.

Presumably you already have your family tree of people established, which would be different from starting from scratch with no relatives entered at all.

Certainly start with yourself and your wife and work out from there, making a note of each person whose records are completed, possibly using a Named List. I don't think there is any particular order that works better than any other.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

Mike, when you moved it, what did you do with my reply?
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GeneSniper
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by GeneSniper »

Maybe too many swear words in it Helen :D. I did wonder where it was best to put it Mike, as it was kind of a FH question but could really apply to any genealogy software.
William

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ColeValleyGirl
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

William :lol:
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tatewise
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by tatewise »

I moved the whole topic (not posting) before I replied and did not see any other replies.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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ColeValleyGirl
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

Then I must have imagined writing the response, and then going back and editing it with second thoughts and correcting typos.

Maybe I was editing it when you moved the post, as I initially responded within a couple of minutes of the original post, and then edited it perhaps 15 minutes later.
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by tatewise »

Yes, it sounds like some interactive glitch with adding/editing replies at the same time as moving to new Forum.
I did not see any replies either before, during, or after moving. Sorry.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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GeneSniper
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by GeneSniper »

Looks like a retype Helen. As you both have said probably just moved at the same time as you posted and nowhere for post to go.
William

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Re: Best way to input information

Post by Russell »

I've been caught with a similar situation before, where I think too long about what I want to say, and the page then times out as it thinks that I've forgotten about it.

So what I tend to do now for anything more than a short message is to create it in Word or a simple text file and then copy and paste when I'm happy.
Also, should something go wrong I don’t have to try and remember what I typed (as long as I’ve saved it regularly, of course!)

:)
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by AdrianBruce »

The only advice that I can give is:
  • If discovering one thing depends on knowing a previous thing, then the previous thing needs to be entered first, with all its sources. That might be a statement of the obvious but if you don't, it's too easy to input a skeleton meaning to add the sources later - and forget, or construct a circular argument.
  • Apart from that, if you have a choice, do something consistent - either all of a family first or all your ancestors first and then siblings in each generation. Still probably easy to miss things.
Really, it's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other - well, it might be 6.1 of one and 5.9 of the other but by the time you've worked out which is the best, you might just as well have plunged on.
Adrian
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GeneSniper
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by GeneSniper »

Adrian

I have put the birth records in for my family back to early 1700's, but now that I have went back to input marriages, divorces, deaths and pad out the family with the census returns I have etc, it can get a bit confusing at some points (Lots of people with the same name) 6 generations in a row with the same name and the next 3 all have children and children's children with that name, not including all the others sprinkled through the first 6's children, not quite as bad on my mothers side but not far off :roll: That got me wondering if it would have been better going back and forward a generation at a time when adding my wife's families information and completing the information on each individual before moving on to the next, that way (I hope) I wouldn't have the issue of four people with the same name all born within 2 years when I go back to input marriage information and have to pick the right one from a list :lol: .

That was why I asked the original question, in case someone had did it both ways and found one way easier than the other. It wasn't an issue when researching initially as I was mainly getting information in small clumps from one part of the family or just one bit of information at a time, so you just added it as you got it. But now I have all the information at once.
William

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Re: Best way to input information

Post by Valkrider »

@William

I have the same issue as you with common names across the generations with my surname study. What I tend to do is select one individual and concentrate on them gathering all their facts both forwards and backwards, adding shared facts to their siblings & parents as I go but still concentrating on the individual. I find that this has a benefit in that it allows me to build a picture of their life. I then move on to one of the persons siblings and do the same thing. This isn't better I just prefer working this way.
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by GeneSniper »

Hi Colin,

I am coming round to that way of thinking, as I believe that just dealing with one person at a time and adding all the information I have on them would probably be a bit easier as I would only be dealing with mainly 3 people with the same name at a time (unless of course there was a birthday party on census night :lol: ).

As a side topic, the name of your surname study is quite unusual and yet amazingly my wife's friend was married to someone with that name.

WF
William

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Re: Best way to input information

Post by tatewise »

Playing devil's advocate, I don't see the difference between adding Sources now and when researching initially.
If there is some doubt about a Source referring to a particular person, then that doubt should have existed initially, and further research undertaken to eliminate the possibility of that Source referring to someone else with similar details who you had not yet found.

It should actually be easier now because you have all the people recorded, so all the criteria exist to associate each Source with the appropriate person, using not just Name & Date but also Place, Occupation and relatives named in the Source.
In particular the names of parents, spouses, and children, especially the females whose names tend not to be so repetitive, should confirm the correct associations.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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GeneSniper
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by GeneSniper »

Mike,

There is no difference to inputting the information. It is more about ease and not adding the information to the wrong person, especially when you have a lot of the same names. It is quite easy adding a birth then marriage cert you may have, it was because I had 15 birth certs with the same name and 13 marriage certs in the same folder and am inputting them one after the other, and obviously all the others. I suppose that it is more to do with having too much information all at once, not as therapeutic as research, input, research some more, input, sleep. More, input, input, input, input, 😴.
William

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AdrianBruce
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by AdrianBruce »

WilliamFrier wrote: 25 Aug 2019 23:11 ... I have put the birth records in for my family back to early 1700's, but now that I have went back to input marriages, divorces, deaths and pad out the family with the census returns I have etc, ...
Depends what you actually did, rather than the formal inputs that you have made into FH of sources, etc, but the risk with just doing birth records but not yet marriages, deaths, censuses, etc. (if if if that's what you actually did) is that you have identified X as your 3G-GF (say) only to find that the child X that you thought was your 3G-GF actually died at 6m old.

As I said, that may not be, in practice, what you actually did, but it's a tendency that some people have not to bother with death or burial records - possibly triggered by the fact that the International Genealogical Index seldom contained death or burial records because they didn't interest the Church of Latter Day Saints.
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GeneSniper
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Re: Best way to input information

Post by GeneSniper »

Remember Adrian I had did most of the research in FTM, I am just re inputting it into FH as the import never went as well as expected :roll:. I thought that a redo would be better than going through all the entries individually and re doing everything I found in the wrong place, it was also going to be a FH learning process for what goes where.
William

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Re: Best way to input information

Post by davidf »

If you are literally just transcribing from one system to another it may not matter too much.
But
If you are taking it as an opportunity to validate your previous research I would move person to person within each family group checking all the "essential records" (BMD CB & census/1939 +WW1 records - at least within E&W) sorting out any contradictions as you go so that when you move away from a family group you can be pretty sure that it is as right as can be.
David
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