* Editing witness roles

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our_babs
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Family Historian: V7

Editing witness roles

Post by our_babs »

Hi, I'm new and this is my first post. I have searched the forum and my copy of getting the most from family historian 6 and still cannot find an answer to my question.
I am using FH v6.2.7
I have been entering data for census returns and adding witnesses. I have created witness roles to match the description on the census - wife, son, daughter, grandson etc.
I realised I have made a couple of spelling mistakes so wanted to edit the roles but, if it is possible to do so, I cannot find or work out how to do it.
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tatewise
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Re: Editing witness roles

Post by tatewise »

Welcome to the FHUG.

I think you misunderstand how to enter Census Events and shouldn't be using Fact Witness Roles for those relationships.
I'll describe below the most popular method, but there are some variants on that theme.

If a Census record identifies the Head of a family with his Wife and Children, then you add that family as Individual records to FH so the husband & wife appear side by side in the Focus Window with their children listed below.
Then each such person has an almost identical Census Event that cites a Source record which holds the transcript and image of the Census record. The only thing different for each Census Event would be the Age of each person.
In addition you would often add Occupation facts and Birth Events derived from the Census record details.

See how_to:index#recording_facts_and_sources|> Recording Facts and Sources and especially how_to:recording_census_records|> Recording from a Census Record and heed the advice to use Ancestral Sources that sinmplifies the process of capturing new Census and BMD records.

BTW: To edit Witness Roles is a two stage process.
See how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates that explains where to edit the Role definitions and their Sentence Templates, etc.
Use Edit > Find and Replace to alter the actual Fact Witness Roles by entering the change and ticking Fact Values and Other Text Fields.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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davidf
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Re: Editing witness roles

Post by davidf »

Mike

Is the method you describe the one that became established before FH supported witnesses?

I must admit I have been toying with the OPs approach. You enter the Census details under the Head of Household and set everyone else as a witness. Where the head of household is not in the tree you set up a census fact with the named Head of Household as a witness - if they subsequently "join the tree" you can then edit the facts to reflect that. (The alternative is to put the unrelated Head of Household in the tree as an unrelated individual - which has the potential advantage of highlighting other relationships)

It has the advantage of (with suitable witness statements/notes) being able to define "John was with his paternal Grandfather in <place> at the time of the <xxxx> census"?

I suspect that once I have got to grips with witnesses - particularly how they are detailed in diagrams (I use diagrams with large text schemes as my principal means of working), this approach may become the more attractive. The only thing then holding me back would be the task of retro-fitting to all previous census facts to avoid a "mixed result"!

(You edit [Census] Witness template sentences via the [Census] fact. Tools > Fact Types > Census > Edit > Roles > (Select Role) > Edit.)
David
Running FH 6.2.7. Under Wine on Linux (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS + LXDE 11)
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tatewise
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Re: Editing witness roles

Post by tatewise »

The method I described is still the recommended method despite Fact Witnesses.
See how_to:recording_census_records|> Recording from a Census Record for pros and cons.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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our_babs
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Re: Editing witness roles

Post by our_babs »

Dear Mike and davidf, thanks very much for all that, I will look into it. I'm very new to FH having been using TMG for many years but have only just taken up my family history again recently since retiring. BTW that's exactly what I needed to do davidf so my problem is all sorted :-))
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