* Where born in census entries

[jelv]

If the where born is not used to update/add to the birth event because that information is already known (from birth record or another census), does it get stored anywhere other than in the text?

The issue I'm having is that some of the people I'm investigating have given different locations for their birth on different census. This has had me fooled when trying to confirm other records I've found as I had discounted them as the birth place was wrong - having looked further and found that on one of the census they had given this different place gave increased confidence that I had found the right person. At the moment I have to go to the source for each census to see what the where born was.

If a person has several census entries, what I'd like to be able to see is a list of the census dates with the where born as given for each - can this be done?

[redvanman]

You could assign more than one birth event to an individual (surprisingly FH lets you do this) each with its own source. Or you can enter any text string in the Place field, for example "Bath or Bristol". Or as I normally do, put the most probable location in the Place field, with a note explaining other possibilities.

Alyn

[tatewise]

The information recorded on Census records is almost always a mixture of fact & fiction.
The names, ages, places, etc, are only as good as what each person told the enumerator.
So those details often change from decade to decade as their memory fades.
That is what makes genealogical research such an interesting challenge.

To answer your question, if the Birth details are not added to the Birth Event then they only exist in the Text From Source field of the Source record.

In such cases, a solution is to edit the Note of the Birth Event to list the anomalies in each Census.
Then when inspecting the Birth Event all the alternative Birth Places are immediately available.
Sometimes I find that what initially appear to be different places are actually closely related.
It is important to recognise that the GRO District where a Birth is registered is often not the Place where people consider they were born, but the nearest town that has a GRO office, sometimes over the border in a different county.

So I often have a Birth Event with its Place recording the GRO District of registration and its Address recording where they were actually born, which can be a different village & county.

Try the Publish > Miscellaneous Reports > Individual Census Report for the selected person, but use the Report > Options > Sources tab to enable the Text From Source for the Source Information to Include. That will then list all the details.

It might be possible to write a custom Query or Plugin to list the specific Census details, but the complication will be identifying which row of the grid in Text From Source that relates to the person if they have recorded their name in various ways.

[jbtapscott]

Giving a completely "curved ball" idea - if you use Ancestral Sources to capture the Census record, you could modify the Templates to have the Column Type of "Where Born" (or whatever it is called in a given Census year) changed to "Generic" instead of "PlaceofBirth" and the value of "Recording" set to "Append to census note local note". This would have the effect of recording that value in the Census fact for each Individual (as well as in the Auto Text on the Source record - if you use that option). It would then save you having to open the Source record to find the Birth place recorded for an individual.

As I say, a somewhat different solution but one that may get you what you want!. This is an approach I use for the Relationship to HofH, Marital Status and Occupation values.

[jelv]

Thanks Mike and Brent

The information recorded on Census records is almost always a mixture of fact & fiction.
The names, ages, places, etc, are only as good as what each person told the enumerator.
So those details often change from decade to decade as their memory fades.

I'd found that pretty quickly - hence realising I sometimes need to look at all the information for each census.

To answer your question, if the Birth details are not added to the Birth Event then they only exist in the Text From Source field of the Source record.

As I feared!

In such cases, a solution is to edit the Note of the Birth Event to list the anomalies in each Census.
Then when inspecting the Birth Event all the alternative Birth Places are immediately available.
Sometimes I find that what initially appear to be different places are actually closely related.
It is important to recognise that the GRO District where a Birth is registered is often not the Place where people consider they were born, but the nearest town that has a GRO office, sometimes over the border in a different county.

So I often have a Birth Event with its Place recording the GRO District of registration and its Address recording where they were actually born, which can be a different village & county.

This is a classic case where having added over 60 census sources I wish I realised the issue and addressed it as I was going along!

Try the Publish > Miscellaneous Reports > Individual Census Report for the selected person, but use the Report > Options > Sources tab to enable the Text From Source for the Source Information to Include. That will then list all the details.

I had found that report (after I made my initial post) and done exactly as you suggest - not the quick immediately visible solution I'd hoped for.

It might be possible to write a custom Query or Plugin to list the specific Census details, but the complication will be identifying which row of the grid in Text From Source that relates to the person if they have recorded their name in various ways.

I'd wondered if that would be possible. Not only is there the issue of how they have recorded their name but it would also need consideration of handling married names as well.

Giving a completely "curved ball" idea - if you use Ancestral Sources to capture the Census record, you could modify the Templates to have the Column Type of "Where Born" (or whatever it is called in a given Census year) changed to "Generic" instead of "PlaceofBirth" and the value of "Recording" set to "Append to census note local note". This would have the effect of recording that value in the Census fact for each Individual (as well as in the Auto Text on the Source record - if you use that option). It would then save you having to open the Source record to find the Birth place recorded for an individual.

I'm not adverse to "curved ball" ideas - I'll have a look at this. I'm using my own modified version of the Census UK tab so I presume I could add the note to that.

[jelv]

Another related query:

I'd not spotted the option to use different separators in the auto text so all of my 60+ census sources are comma delimited. Is there a quick was to change these to tab delimited to make them more readable?

[tatewise]

I am not sure that changing the Where Born column definition in AS is a good idea.
I suspect the standard column definition is involved in the process of offering to update the Birth Event.
If you remove that definition then that update process will probably not work.
You would need to add an extra Generic column in which you replicated the Where Born data in order to get the Append to local note option.

I would have to check, but I suspect the Search and Replace Plugin could do that.
Don't use the FH Edit > Find and Replace as that would replace commas all over the place.
Before deciding what to substitute, take a look at how_to:tabulate_multiline_text_in_records_and_reports|> Tabulate Multiline Text in Records and Reports.

[jelv]

I have reservations about changing the functionality of the Where Born column, especially if using the Add options for new individuals.

Adding an extra column an extra generic column has it's merits. I'd only need to fill that in if the data in the census is different to the data already held in FH. Something to think about.

Thanks for the knowledge base steer. I'll use {TAB}| from now on (using comma when one of the elements of the data uses commas is pretty dumb - especially if it is not the last which for some census it isn't).

[tatewise]

The settings for the Search and Replace Plugin are shown below.
It focusses on just Source Records and their Text From Source fields.
If necessary you can Select Records and choose just those with Type of Census.

The Search uses LUA Pattern Mode to detect a comma followed by a non-space [^ ] which is captured in parentheses.
The Replace substitutes a tab | and space followed by the captured character %1 from the Search.
That ensures that any normal comma followed by a space does not get converted.

The Plugin will need to be run twice to ensure multiple adjacent commas are all converted.

SearchAndReplaceCommas.png (33.98 KiB) Viewed 7272 times

[jelv]

It's very nearly worked. It didn't need running twice to find adjacent commas.

Edit: some records (including the first few I checked) didn't need it and some did - slight white space differences in the way blank fields were done.

The minor hiccup is that if the last line ends with a comma it is not changed as there is nothing after it (all the other lines are OK as the next character is new line which is not a space).

[jelv]

Cracked it!

Needed an extra search and replace of ,$ by {tab}|

[tatewise]

Excellent.
Did you spot the other tip that every Text From Source should start with a blank line?
Otherwise, its first line in the Report follows on the same line as the Text From Source: heading, and so does not align with the subsequent text.

That can similarly be fixed with the Search and Replace Plugin by a Search for first character not being newline:
^([^¶
])
and Replace with:
¶
%1

[cynicalm]

People rarely lie about their birthplace but often give different locations, parish, township, farm, nearest village the enumerator has heard of.

[jelv]

I've been using Google maps a lot to see how far it is between differently named places for just that reason. A lot of my family are from very small villages in North Norfolk.