Families who move around

redvanman · Post by **redvanman** » 18 Mar 2012 17:11

My grandfather moved from place to place several times after he was married, and consequently, so did his wife, and his children.
I could, of course, copy all the relevant Residence facts into the records of all the individuals concerned, but before I do so, I wonder if anyone has more elegant way of recording information that applies to more than one person?
Thank you.

ID:6019

Post by **tatewise** » 18 Mar 2012 17:50

I created some Custom Family Attributes that include a Co-residence fact with sentence Template of {date} {couple} lived.
However, this only applies to the married/partnership couple and not their children.

If you use Ancestral Sources then for Census and Baptism and Marriage events it automatically replicates the Residence facts for each Individual of the family.

AdrianBruce · Post by **AdrianBruce** » 18 Mar 2012 22:37

I've tried about 3 ways - none entirely satisfactory.

Originally I had separate facts against each person and copied the fact from 1 to the next. I should add that my facts nearly always have an extensive note with them to expand on the bare bones of the date/place/value/etc. My objection to this was that as soon as I altered one fact, it was out of step with the others, and since I am forever extending the date range of a residence fact and altering the text of the note as I added the next census at a new address, this became a pain as it had to be repeated on each inhabitant. (NB - I don't use AS so your mileage may vary on this point).

Then I went for separate facts against each person but with nothing in the note - instead I had a shared note linked to each person. Extending a date still had to be done against each but at least the note was only written once. While data-input is more robust, output gets to be a pain as any report on a family of 5 (say) included 5 copies of the shared note, 1 for each person. And the shared note was distant from the residence fact in the reports.

So my current method is (like Tatewise's) a custom family-attribute I called 'Residence (family)'. The note against this contains the text expanding on the bare value and FH ensures this is printed sensibly in reports. But, as Tatewise says 'this only applies to the married/partnership couple and not their children'. For the children, I use the normal Residence attribute but I've set the 'Auto-create note' for residence to read 'He was living here with his parents / his family. She was living here with her parents / her family. This was immediately before his wedding. This was immediately before her wedding.' This gets edited as each residence fact is created. So a child's note will be altered to simply read (e.g.) 'She was living here with her parents.' On the report it will only say that and not give the detail but that does act as a prompt to anyone to go and read up on the parents. Well, in theory it does.

The proper answer would be to alter GEDCOM to allow a multi-person event where the date/place/value/note/etc. is entered once but linked to multiple people - alas, there's no chance of this ever happening. [frown]

Post by **tatewise** » 19 Mar 2012 00:45

This is a classic example of the problem of recording the same data in multiple places.

I have a Locations database built using Source & Repository records, with one Source per Address.
This is cited by every Fact that specifies that Address.
It does not completely solve the problem, but helps keep information in one place.

There is some help on the horizon with FH V5 Plugins that allow GEDCOM editing such that, for instance, related Residence facts could be globally changed.

redvanman · Post by **redvanman** » 31 Mar 2012 12:58

Thanks to everyone who responded - I'll have to give some thought to all your suggestions

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