* Residence fact

[appleybridger]

I am 'playing' around with AS to get used to it.I'm still making some mistakes but I have noticed that when I've entered the census info and look at individuals property box the residence fact for the census is not showing although I entered it in AS.The occupation ,when entered,does show however.

Any comments please.

ID:4807

[Jane]

Have you checked the options, I suspect by default it creates a Census event rather than a residence one.

[nsw]

You should find it creates a census fact with date, place, address (if specified) and age for each individual. It doesn't create a residence fact (although there is an option to use residence instead of census) because the details of the residence would be identical to the census. Personally I prefer a census event because it makes it clear that this is just the place where the person was staying on census night (though in most cases this is also where they lived). Whereas residence tends to make people think that is where the person lived which might not be the case.

[jmurphy]

I also prefer the census record to be listed as a census rather than a residence. As Nick says, in most cases people were at home on census night, but I've got at least one case where a granddaughter is visiting her grandmother on census night, and without any other evidence, I think it would be a mistake to assume that the child had been sent to live with her grandmother permanently.

[AdrianBruce]

Interesting - I've always used the census form (though not via AS) to create both census and residence facts - unless the form clearly spells out that the person is a lodger, boarder or visitor.

My suspicion (unprovable?) is that the majority of grandchildren with grandparents were indeed resident with them - either relieving the crowding in the parents' house or helping the grandparents out. I do however, when I remember, try and make it clear by writing in the note for residence something alone the lines of 'At least on census night 1911, Nelly was staying with her Granny Smith'.

[nsw]

I'd just argue that the point of a census fact is to say 'This person was in residence at this house on this particular census night'. And so if you also had a residence fact it would imply 'This person was resident at this house on a particular day' which is basically the same thing anyway so I'm not sure of the benefit of recording it twice.

Nick

[AdrianBruce]

If the census and residence facts were in 1 to 1 correspondence, I'd agree Nick. However, what I normally end up with is X different census facts per person and then rather less residence facts, each of which cover a range, e.g. 'Resident in Nantwich from 1835 to 1851' and 'Resident in Crewe from 1853 to 1867', because my residence facts are a deduction from individual sources such as marriage facts, baptism facts, census facts, etc.

The same thing happens with my occupation facts - they end up as a range, not half-a-dozen (say) snapshots.

Though what I also generally do when creating a narrative report (say) is exclude the census facts since (by reason of how I've done it) they don't add anything to the story. Though that means I have to remember to put any interesting titbits from the census elsewhere in other facts.

I know some people will starting mildly tutting at my merging half-a-dozen snapshot facts into one long range. My reasoning is that I've always regarded the facts against an individual as being the first stage in a synthesis of information - while I know others prefer to keep the facts as raw as possible. As has been said in the past - different people do things different ways.

And of course one regret is that this approach doesn't sit well with AS - ah well, that's my problem, I started down this road!