* Consolidating multiple occupation facts?

[MalcolmR]

Having entered multiple birth, marriage and death certificates along with census records I find that, for some individuals I have multiple facts on different dates for, essentially, the same piece of information. For example, one of my ancestors, who had 14 children, was a joiner. Older sources record him as a "joiner (journeyman)", later this becomes "Master joiner" and finally "joiner (retired). Additionally, where he was not the informant it is often just given as "joiner". With BMD certificates for the 14 children plus censuses I now have around 40 occupation facts all, essentially, stating that he was a joiner.

Whilst these 40 facts are an accurate reflection of the source documents I feel they are getting in the way of understanding this aspect of his life and wonder if I should consolidate this into, perhaps, occupation 1 - "joiner (journeyman)", occupation 2 - "Master joiner" and occupation 3 - "joiner (retired)" with each of these citing the individual sources. Is this a sensible idea or could I come to regret it?

If I do make this change, how best to achieve it? I have considered taking the earliest and latest dates for each of journeyman, master and retired and using them with a date period but the earliest and latest dates are not the true ends of those periods just points in time so could be misleading. I am also reluctant to do anything which loses the detail I have painstakingly entered so maybe make the dates of each event (from the certificates) "private" and create three summary occupations?

[LornaCraig]

Hello, welcome to FHUG.

Yes, in cases like this where there is overwhelming evidence that a person had one trade and stuck to it throughout their working life I do consolidate the occupation facts. If you are likely to use narrative reports this is certainly a good idea because a single paragraph summarising a person’s working life makes the report much more readable.

Your idea of keeping all the detail you have already recorded but marking all those separate facts ‘private’ is a good one, as you will not lose anything but the private facts can be suppressed in reports.

You have highlighted the problem that you can’t be sure of the exact start and end dates of each phase of the career. I get round this by creating a single undated occupation fact and summarising everything in the note for that fact. For example the note might say “He started work as an apprentice joiner in 1870. By 1879 (probably earlier) he was working as a journeyman joiner in [town] and was still a journeyman at the time of the birth of his youngest child in 1896. By the time of the 1901 census he was a master joiner with employees. He was still working in 1921 but had retired by 1928 when daughter was married.” All your sources can be cited against this single fact, but you will still have the private facts to refer to if you need to check any details.

[AdrianBruce]

I'd agree with Lorna's approach except that I'd tend to have (say) four separate facts for apprentice, journeyman, master and retired. It's possibly less important here where there isn't a huge amount to say about each phase (unless you know better!) but in some cases it would be more legible if the later phases were closer to other facts that might be linked. Master tradesmen, for instance, might have a residence "over the shop" (literally) so it might make sense for that phase to be closer to the relevant residence.

Incidentally I presume that the undated facts would - or could - have a sort-date to physically get them in an appropriate position in the list?

[Jean001]

I enter all occupations in the usual way using the Occupation Fact.

Also, I use a custom Fact (Occ(s) List) where I list all the occupations found over a lifetime for an individual.

For example:
Coal Miner (1861), Miner (1867), Collier (1868x2), Coal Miner (1871x3, 73, 75, 81, 82, 91), Miner (1894), Platelayer's labourer (1901), Unemployed (1911), Miner (1914), Coal miner (formerly) (1915:post-death record), Coal miner hewer (1924:post-death record)

I deliberately use the term used in each source but there could be some merging of occupations in the example above if desired.

I also add references to unemployment and retirement.

I am interested in how an individual is remembered/described by others hence the inclusion of 'post-death record'.

I give the Fact a 'Normal Time Frame' of 'Pre-Birth' so that it sits in the Individual's Fact Tab ahead of dated Facts.

I started this practice long before I used any genealogical/family history software and found it so useful that I carried on. By now, I am on 'auto-pilot' with regard to this so I do it without having 'to think'. I am sure that a query could be used to create the basis of such a listing.

I make a similar list for residences/census places.

(I manually enter all information in FH.)

[KFN]

For me, if the individual had the same "occupation" but different phases. I enter a single OCCU record that explains what they did, then I create different EVEN tags that outline the progression. Because GEDCOMv5.5.1 does not allow a value following the EVEN (an oversight) you could also use a FACT tag.

1 EVEN
2 TYPE Joiner
2 DATE ABT xxxx

1 EVEN
2 TYPE Master Joiner
2 DATE ABT XXXX

1 EVEN
2 TYPE Joiner (Retired)
2 DATE ABT XXXX

Where the XXXX represents the Date of the Source.

-OR-

1 FACT Apprentice
2 TYPE Joiner
2 DATE ABT xxxx

1 FACT Master
2 TYPE Joiner
2 DATE ABT xxxx

1 FACT Retired
2 TYPE Joiner
2 DATE ABT xxxx