* Census and how it Supports Birth facts

[David Potter]

Thank you Colin.

I'm leaning towards your approach of you can't have too much info. I'm just seeking a balance of opinion as to should the Burial be cited against the Birth if it doesn't add weight to the Birth fact. IE, no age, therefore what purpose does it serve to cite it other than as you say gives the possibility to question it again later. I guess I'm also trying to keep things 'Lean' using a Manufacturing term; as in don't use it if it doesn't truly add value.

I see no harm either way but would like to adopt a good foundation going forward. As you say everyone does this differently.

Cheers

[tatewise]

Yes, if there is nothing in the Burial Event Source Citation that adds anything to the birth details then it should not be cited by the Birth Event.

But that goes for any Source Citation.
Every Source document should be reviewed, and for each fragment of information it verifies, then add a Citation of it to the appropriate Fact, Name, Individual, Family, etc.

But bear in mind that each fragment, even in the same document, will have varying degrees of authenticity.
Take a Burial Parish Record for example.
The Date and Place are contemporary first hand details and highly authentic.
The Name of the person is authentic for the time of burial but may not be the formally recorded Birth Name.
Details about the birth are NOT contemporary with the burial (unless for an infant) so may be wrong, as on a Census record.
So the Birth Event could cite that Burial Parish Record regarding the birth details, but the Assessment should be lower than details from say a Baptism or Birth document.
Another strategy is to organise the Citations in their order of authenticity with the best first.
That helps when writing Expressions (in Queries & Diagrams) to test what evidence exists for a fact, because the best evidence will be the 1st Citation, and the Expression does not have to consider subsequent Citation instances.

You need to consider when the details that are recorded in a document actually happened and who recorded those details.
If recorded about the time they happened by someone who witnessed them then they are very authentic.
If recorded a long time later by someone who was not a witness then they are very dubious.

[David Potter]

Thank you Mike

Yes - I see now. That makes good sense and about what I had in mind. I have used AS with inappropriate option settings and now have to review/redo a lot of things. But I'm getting there now and it will be well worthwhile.

Thanks for that input - much appreciated.

[David Potter]

Hi David/Everyone

Firstly to David. Apologies for not responding to your last post. I thought I had but missed doing that for some reason. And again what you say makes very good sense. Unfortunately, I can see now I have been more focussed on growing the tree than documenting efficiently the source of the data found. This is being addressed now.

Secondly - I'm within an hour of so of finishing a mammoth task on applying all you guys posted in these threads. But I can now see this is time well spent. In particular Citing the Source against the Name as well as the Life Event/Facts. Thank you so much for getting me on the right path.

To save keep posting here. Is there some guidelines anywhere re best techniques of using FH, similar to what we have discussed here? EG, how best to exploit the features and functions? Best practice if you like. I have the book Getting the Most from FH 6, but it doesn't really go far enough in covering some of the things we have discussed here.

I do appreciate that everyone has their favourite approach to a) Genealogy in general, and b) Using FH. But I would like to move forward now having seen the light so as to speak on what can be done with some effort. Something I missed doing for many years in TMG.

Looking forward to your comments.

Kind regards

David

[tatewise]

Much of what has been discussed is covered in how_to:index#beginners_guide|> Beginners Guide under Using and Recording Sources and can also be reached from how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers via Sources Methods 1 & 2 and Ancestral Sources.

You need to follow the orange links to explore all the related advice throughout the [kb]|[/kb] pages.

I know you were advised to checkout how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers when you joined in June 2016 with topic Default Married Females to have Maiden name as Primary (13920). Perhaps this would be a good time to review that advice again.

[David Potter]

Thank you Mike. I will do that. I was so keen to get my tree data migrated out of TMG, which under win10 did not behave so well. I probably glossed over all the good stuff.

Thanks again for the links...

[David Potter]

Hi Guys/Mike

I have read through the documentation suggested by Mike once more and to be honest - not a lot new jumped out at me, mainly because I have now learned the hard way. But useful anyways. Where I went wrong was to not read thoroughly the AS documentation re the possible settings for each area of functionality. I watched the tutorials but then basically jumped straight in. That's where it began to go wrong - particularly not linking sources to Names during creation. A hard lesson learned and embarrassed to have to report that here - but onwards and upwards.

I do have teaser for you guys if you wish to join in the discussion. Because I'm at a loss how to best handle this and trying to develop a consistent rule to be applied.

Scenario:
The 1911 UK Census reports statistics for Children born of the Marriage or Relationship. IE, Total Children Born Alive, Children Still Living and Children Who Have Died.

If via earlier Census records it is fairly reliable that you have captured all 'known' children born of the marriage between say 1841 and 1901. Say 5 Children are recorded over that time span. Then on the 1911 census 6 children are reported a being born with 5 still living but 1 had died. How would you handle this?

What I have been doing rightly or wrongly is creating an unknown individual with Surname only, Unsexed. With Birth and Death Facts Born before 2 Apr 1911 and Died before 2 Apr 1911; and then Citing the 1911 Census record to those facts - even though they were not technically recorded on it! This brings the Child count up to the correct number. But clearly without deeper research this unknown child record is lacking substance.

Also since learning about the best practice advice of attaching the Source to the Name I have been doing this for the unknown individual.

Is this totally flawed in someway?

Many thanks.

[tatewise]

That is about the best you can do.
If you did not want to commit to creating the child record, you could just use the Child Count Attribute with a Citation for both parents (or the Family record Count of Children but that cannot have a Citation).

Then it is matter of searching hard for the child birth and infant death registrations.

However, it can be complicated by parents often using the same forename again after an infant dies.
So the John Smith who was 1 month old in 1861 Census, may not be the same John Smith as in 1871 Census at 9 years of age.
The first John Smith may have died just after the Census, and the second John Smith born within the year.

[AdrianBruce]

... What I have been doing rightly or wrongly is creating an unknown individual with Surname only, Unsexed. With Birth and Death Facts Born before 2 Apr 1911 and Died before 2 Apr 1911 ...

This sounds fine to me - it's exactly what I do, except I can't remember what I do with the dates of birth and death.

... and then Citing the 1911 Census record to those facts - even though they were not technically recorded on it! ...

This is not a problem, in fact it's exactly what you should be doing. The fact that they are not personally recorded on the 1911 simply means that it does not provide direct evidence for them. Instead, what it does is provide indirect evidence for them - and therefore, to be strictly correct, the 1911 must be cited against those facts, else how will you know where the indirect evidence was from?

Of course there are no real "musts", but there are inevitable consequences - and one of those inevitable consequences is that if you don't cite your indirect evidence as robustly as your direct, you will lose track of why you think something.

And yes, someone is probably thinking - what about negative evidence? Cite that? Yes, I say, if it really is negative evidence and not simply a failure to find stuff.

The other pain in the posterior is, of course, that the GEDCOM Assessment item doesn't cover the direct / indirect / negative axis. Frankly, I just set indirect and negative evidence as secondary and don't worry any more.

[David Potter]

Hi Guys

Wow I'm chuffed - I did good. Thank you both so much. I've been getting a little paranoid lately questioning everything I have been doing.
And yes Mike I have come across that same scenario where two children one who had died has there full name passed onto the next same sex child. Very confusing if you're not looking out for it.

Thank you both once again. That's really lifted my confidence that I'm doing things right at last.

David

[AdrianBruce]

... Then it is matter of searching hard for the child birth and infant death registrations. ...

Mike and I were obviously typing at the same time but since he's always more concise than me, he got there first!

But what I remembered when seeing the above quote, is my distinct suspicion that, in defiance of the instruction to record "Children Born Alive", in some rare cases, the missing children are actually still-births. I'm fairly certain that I retried finding missing children with the mother's-maiden-name indexes and still failed - which tends to suggest missing still-births - or misunderstood counting of who should be recorded.

[David Potter]

Thanks Adrian - that's a good point indeed. Who's to say the parents reported it accurately as in born alive!

Thank you - duly noted.

[Gowermick]

Personally, with respect to missing children, I simply add a note to the mother stating the status of her children in 1911 but leave it at that. I then shift this note to the top, so that it shows on the focus screen as a reminder that a child or children may be missing. It seems pointless exercise to me to add a child when you don't know their sex or name, or when and where they were born and died.

With the new GRO indexes showing mothers name from 1837 to 1915, I have now been revisiting all married women who appeared in the 1911 census, in an attempt to find these missing children, and have managed to find a good 95% of them this way. It does help of course if the family didn't move around much, and all the other children were registered in same registration district.

However, I do err on the side of caution in this and when in doubt, leave it out!

[David Potter]

Thank you Mike. I guess everyone has their preferred way of doing this. And that's a nice tip re the GRO references with Mother's name. Could help to find some of these missing children.

Thank you.

[Gowermick]

David,
The new GRO indexes can be also be very useful for finding/confirming we have the correct GRO reference for those children we do know about, and that we have correct marriages for their parents. I found it particularly useful for finding Maiden name of women who were widowed when they married, and I didn't have parish register available to see who their father was!

[brianlummis]

It can also help to uncover those instances when a widowed husband made their lives easier when re-marrying by finding someone with the same first name. One of my ancestors had two wives named Kate and I did not realise this until I found with the new GRO Index that the children had a mother with a different maiden name!

Brian

[David Potter]

Thank you Mike and Brian.

@Mike are you referring to new BMD search potential within GRO website or some other BMD site?

[Gowermick]

David,
I'm referring to the 'new' search facility provided by gro.gov.uk. Although you have to register first, registering is free and without obligation. You would need to register at some point anyway, should you want buy a certificate, as this is the best and cheapest place to order them. Whatever you do, do not use 3rd party sites to order your certificates, as they will charge extra for providing the service!

[tatewise]

I wasn't thinking of anywhere specifically, but the fhugdownloads:contents:service_uk_gro_online_index_search|> Service ~ UK GRO Online Index Search would help as it now includes mother’s maiden name at birth, and the age at death, right back to 1837, so finding siblings and infant mortality is easier.

[David Potter]

Thank you all - I'll take a closer look. I have been using FREEBMD up to now.

[tatewise]

FreeBMD and for that matter Ancestry and FindMyPast only index what is in the GRO Index, whereas UK GRO Online Index Search adds those other details derived from their own GRO Certificate records that the others cannot access.

[David Potter]

Ah - I see thank you Mike.