* Witness to Marriage

[Johnr65]

There should be a fact called 'Witness' for when a person is/was a witness to a marriage. Currently I look at the facts and I see Marriage but the person didn't marry then but was a witness to a marriage! It is not helpful currently. I guess there can be a fact made for 'Witness' but then how do I change all the people who were witnesses from marriage facts?

[KFN]

The witness to any event is always recorded as part of that event rather than a “fact” to the one who did the witnessing.

By that I mean, The event is a marriage between two people, thus a marriage event is created (a MARR tag is added to the FAMily record). A witness to that event is then noted in this marriage event on the family record, not on any other record (the witness) in the database.

[tatewise]

My FHUG KB Download Kinsfolk Facts includes a Marriage Witness custom fact but that was intended for use before FH introduced Fact Witnesses.

You could use the Change Any Fact Tag plugin to alter or delete unwanted Marriage events.

However, a better solution is to use Marriage event Fact Witnesses which have default Roles already defined for Bridesmaid, Best man, Witness, Minister, Priest, Rabbi.

[Johnr65]

It's very confusing, Mike, are you referring to actual AS marriage fact?

[tatewise]

No, all the advice in this thread relates to Family Historian because it is in the Using Family Historian forum.

It is possible to choose any of the options mentioned here via the AS Further Info tab Associated Individuals.

Please explain exactly what is confusing you.
It may help us if could post a screenshot illustrating you orginal problem.

[Johnr65]

Showing screenshot of problem:

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[jbtapscott]

It looks to me like you have set the Marriage Fact Definition / Roles / Advanced / Summary Template for Witness "on" and set the text to Marriage. My Marriage Witness is shown as follows:

Screenshot 2024-08-08 151811.jpg (19.53 KiB) Viewed 701 times

[tatewise]

OK, so you have created a Fact Witness for a Marriage event with the Role of _Witness but you have not defined a Role Sentence Template for that scenario, so FH is using a default template.

I suspect you may have defined that Role in AS but forgotten to customise FH.

In FH use Tools > Fact Types..., select the Marriage event, click Edit..., and check the Witness Roles: listed.
I expect Witness is listed but not _Witness so click Roles... and then one of the following two options.

If you've never used the Role: Witness then select Witness, click Edit, change Role Name: to _Witness, click OK.

If not sure then click Add to add a New Role with these details:
Role Name: _Witness
Past Tense: witnessed
Role Sentence Template: {individual} witnessed the marriage of {principal} {date} {place}
Finally click Create.

Use Close and OK out of dialogues.

[Johnr65]

Thank you Mike, yes I changed it on AS but didn't realise it had to be changed on FH. How can I change the ones that are 'wrong' in my tree of 35k people?

[tatewise]

What do you mean by 'wrong'?
Do you mean they are using the original Witness Role instead of your new _Witness Role?

If so then it does no harm to leave them as they are.

However, to change them use my Search and Replace plugin as shown below.

On the Major Options tab:
Set Search Scope to Marriage (FAM.MARR)
Set Search: to Witness
Set Replace: to _Witness

On the Extra Filters tab:
Tick only All other one line Short Text fields and exclude all other options.
Finally click Search & Replace
If the Role Replacement Value looks OK then untick Confirm every item found and click Replace to change all of them.

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[Johnr65]

Excellent Mike thank you very much.