* Recording Military Facts

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philmcleod
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Recording Military Facts

Post by philmcleod »

Does anyone have a good example of a custom fact set for recording military events during a period of service. It could simply go as a series of occupation events and record details in the notes section, or a series of custom facts, one for each significant event. I have an ancestor that served in the Royal Navy from 1796 to 1802 and wish to record the ships that he sailed on with dates locations and events. I want the information to appear in reports as a précis of his experiences, including being discharged to hospital in Bombay and then returning to England by a merchant ship, before eventually being pensioned off.
More recently I have a father-in law for whom I wish to record similar facts during his national service.
Any suggestions of the best way to tackle these will be much appreciated
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tatewise
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Re: Recording Military Facts

Post by tatewise »

Have you experimented with the Military offerings in fhugdownloads:factsets|> Downloads and Links ~ Fact Sets?

A tradeoff to consider is that OCCUpation Facts are more portable than Custom Facts, but more of a challenge to produce appropriate Narrative Sentences.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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philmcleod
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Re: Recording Military Facts

Post by philmcleod »

Thanks. I will investigate the Custom Fact Link and experiment
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LornaCraig
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Re: Recording Military Facts

Post by LornaCraig »

In similar cases I have usually found that the simplest approach works best for the purposes of reports. In this case I would use a single Occupation event, recording that he was a Royal Naval seaman from 1796 to 1802. Then put all the detail in the note associated with the fact. This enables you to write an elegant précis which will avoid the repetitious style produced by sentences generated from a series of separate occupation or travel facts. All supporting documents can be cited as sources for the single occupation fact.

In a few cases I have created two or three occupation facts to correspond with a person's change of military rank, with corresponding dates, but again I use the note to hold all the detail of their activities during each period. The prose then flows smoothly in reports.
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AdrianBruce
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Re: Recording Military Facts

Post by AdrianBruce »

Like Lorna, I find it makes no sense to split military service into separate events and / or attributes. The problem is that facts with a date range print out with their start and end date and are then followed by events that occur during that time period - and halfway down the page, you've forgotten the end-date that you're working under.

Certainly it would be possible to break military service down into single date events - but then it becomes difficult to see what's happening in the person's property box.

So - write your precis yourself and keep it in the Note text for the fact. That's my advice.
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philmcleod
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Re: Recording Military Facts

Post by philmcleod »

Thanks for all suggestions. I think the note method is probably best
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RSellens
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Re: Recording Military Facts

Post by RSellens »

Hi. i would just to add my thoughts....

I find it makes perfect sense to split out details where approriate. For my realtives in the miltary i have enlistment events, as they occur on a specific date/place. I then have service events which include rank and unit, again these normally occur for specific date ranges or on known dates (i.e. a service record tells me a person was a certain range between A & B dates, whilst a entry on a nominal roll is only at a specific date). I then have events that cover items like, leave, disaplinary actions, specifc battles/conficts, etc.

By doing the above you an correctly source the items, so you can show the 'proof' for each bit of infomation.


Richard
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tatewise
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Re: Recording Military Facts

Post by tatewise »

What this does is highlight the flexibility of FH in offering alternative methods.

It partly depends on your objectives.
Do you want tightly Sourced facts, or flowing Narrative reports?
It is of course possible to achieve both, but probably needs some duplicate data entry.
e.g.
Use Richard's detailed Facts with specific Source Citations, but inhibit their Sentence Templates.
Use Adrian & Lorna's composite Fact with Notes to obtain flowing Narrative Sentences.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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philmcleod
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Re: Recording Military Facts

Post by philmcleod »

Having read all the suggestions, my conclusion is that if you have a long military history to record with precise detail then Richards view is best. If like my ancestor the military career was for just a few years and a relatively small number of events are recorded then Lorna's method will suffice.

Thanks to all
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AdrianBruce
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Re: Recording Military Facts

Post by AdrianBruce »

Another point at which Richard's approach would benefit, would be if you were recording a lot of soldiers and wanted to analyse or query their ranks, promotions, medals, etc, etc. Then getting precise structuring of the info would enable this.
Adrian
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bonzobob
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Re: Recording Military Facts

Post by bonzobob »

Hi,
I'm new to this forum (and forums in general) and tend to dip in and out of my genealogy research as and when time and funds permit.
I'm using V5 which has served me well and it has more features than I actually need.
However, although I have found the recording of military facts information very useful, I am not able to produce a flowing Narrative report using the codes <br> or <para> from the Customisation Tips in the Report Tips and Tricks Knowledge Base. Instead the codes appear as typed.
Does this necessitate an upgrade to V6?
I apologise if this is under the wrong topic.
Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
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tatewise
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Re: Recording Military Facts

Post by tatewise »

Welcome to the FHUG.

Yes, FH V6 added many new features in the Sentence Template expressions and <br> and <para> codes are just two of them, so maybe it is time to upgrade, but beware that FH V7 is not too far away.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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