* As - Marriage - Minister

[bonalymac]

sorry, but another technical question.

I read in one of the Tutorials that the minister field was not written back into FH. (Unfortunately I can't find it again using the search at the moment).

I see however that in my default auto-text it does appear, so the lack of writing back may not really be an issue. Is there a "preferred " choice for the experienced users to either use the minister field or to use a witness field.

My own simple view is that the minister is (in the vast majority of cases) almost certainly not a relevant person to the family history, so recording in auto-text should be sufficient.

Thanks

Colin

[tatewise]

Colin, I have moved this to the Ancestral Sources Forum.

Your analysis is largely correct.
Regarding Auto-Text, it is usual for that to be a literal transcript of the Source document.
The Auto-Text Templates offer an educated guess at what is required but the Auto-Text often needs manual editing to get the details correct, and as you say, would normally include the Minister.

The Associated Type Templates include Minister as well as Best man, Bridesmaids, etc.
So the Minister can be added as a Fact Witness perhaps using the Just a name option.

[bonalymac]

You are essentially confirming my thoughts. So I presume that the choice is purely personal preference. There is no "best" answer.

Colin

[tatewise]

Correct, except in cases where you know the Minister is a family relation, in which case a full Fact Witness is a good option as long as you understand and are happy that Fact Witnesses do NOT migrate to most other products. Alternatives would be Associated Person links, but they are also NOT well supported by most products (including FH), or Custom Facts that are well supported by most products.

Similar arguments apply to all the other Fact Witnesses, but the migration problem is partly mitigated by the Export Gedcom File Plugin.

[mezentia]

the minister is (in the vast majority of cases) almost certainly not a relevant person to the family history

True, but I have come across a few in my tree. It would be useful if this could be accommodated in AS in a similar manner to witnesses, etc. Fortunately, as Mike explains, there are other alternatives for recording the connection.

[tatewise]

It is accommodated in AS using a Fact Witness for the Role of Minister as I explained earlier.

[mezentia]

Having used the Associated person field to enter details of witnesses at marriages, baptisms, etc., I must admit that I hadn't spotted the Minister entry. This is probably as I always entered the Minister's details on the field labelled, appropriately, Minister. As this is a text field, I also enter the capacity in which the minister officiated, e.g. Curate, Vicar, Precentor, etc. Sometimes, the source may also indicate that the minister was from a different church or parish.

Arguably, the Minister field could be dispensed with as it duplicates the functionality of the Associated person fields elsewhere in the form. However, I suggest the following.

The Minister field be modified to allow entry of either a text name or a link to another individual in the file, as for Associated persons. In addition, a new Capacity field is added to allow the minister's capacity in the event to be recorded for an existing person, synonymous with occupation. The name and capacity could then be used to update the minister's details, in much the same way as occupation is updated in census entries. Potentially, a place/address is also needed, defaulting to that on the first tab defining where the event being recorded occurred. The Minister entry could remain in the Associated persons list, but if my suggestions are followed, it rather becomes redundant.

To make things even better, AS could concatenate entries for the minister if duplicate capacity entries exist, replacing multiple entries with a single entry with a from to date range, and linking to all the individual sources that refer to these events. Alternatively, could this concatenation facility be provided via a plugin?

[tatewise]

There are some potentially good ideas there, but you have overlooked some important issues.

The Associated Individuals feature is governed by templates that define the Method of association for each Role type.
e.g.
Witness Role (only valid for FH V6)
Associated Person structure one-way or both-ways
Custom Event/Attribute
etc ...
There are also Role options for Minister, Priest & Rabbi and others could be added to match the Witness Roles in the Marriage Event definition in FH.

Your proposal removes all those features and reduces to just FH V6 Witness Role for the Role of Minister.

So by all means propose the Capacity and Place/Address fields to create an Occupation, but for the first Minister, Priest or Rabbi added to the Associated Individual list using the Individual in file option, which identifies the Individual record to use.