Some events are mentioned in a multitude of sources. For example birth dates. WE have ofcourse the primary source of the certificate. But with every child of this person marrying, municipal records that register families and address changes, etc etc, the birth date might be mentioned again. (and some other dates as well. When I started my research I linked every secondary source to every event it mentioned. But stopped doing that, I failed to see the use of repeating info so many times. For now I record primary source and sources where the info differs from the primary.
But then I found sources I didn’t need to link, because everything in it was already recorded. And started recording some source as events (which I now regret) just to not throw them away.
Taking the example of birth, I create an Event (type Birth) with Citations mentioning the birth itself. When the same person is mentioned again in other events, the birth date is usually a means to disambiguate the person from potential homonyms. It is not an event per se, at least not another birth event. Consequently, I don’t record a new citation for the initial Birth event, at least because this source does not target the Birth event.
In case the date is different, I tend to have better trust in the citations of the Birth event because they were written closer to it. The difference incites me to assign a lower confidence level to the data. Anyway, thee discrepancy is noted in the summary Note I always attach to any event (in order not to depend on external links; also a Note is searchable while an image or link is not).
When I have plurality of sources for the same event, I always record all the sources, even if they are duplicates stored in various locations (libraries, archival institutes, …). But I have a single summary Note where I can write down the different versions, mention exact duplicates or highlight the differences.
A Death Certificate proves the death event. It probably has information about the birth. It goes on the death event but not the birth event even if the birth information agrees 100% with the Birth Certificate. I put the Source/Citation on the bit of information it Proves.
I am working on some ancestors that have been investigated and published by previous genealogists. These works get added to the Person, not to all the various bits of facts presented. The totality of the source/citations attached to a person/family paint the picture of the person’s life/history.
Thank you @DaveSch.
I never thought of using the Person-Source Citations in that way. But I like that. Yet an other job to add to the already growing list of Gramps-jobs. Moving those out of the way.
Hope you don’t mind me picking your brain a bit more..
The FindAGrave title from your example made me think. Since I have a few of those and no other means to make sure the info is correct I have put the dates with the person and added the citation from FindAGrave to those. Would you in such a case put them under the person-source citation and then link back to the date? Or just in general, if you find a clue to an event would make that event? Then link the Person-Source citation to the Event-Source citation?
Normally, the FindAGrave citation would have gone on the Burial record. In this case, it provides no clue of where he is buried. I put it on the person record more to remind myself that I have checked the source. A S/C like FindAGrave may have birth and death dates taken from the grave marker. But because even the engraved stone has a date, it does not Prove that birth occurred on that date. At best, it proves that the person is buried there. But even then, I know the oldest cemetery in my town going back to the 1640’s grave markers were added well after the time of death and actual locations were mere guesses.
Yes that’s much the same here. Generally I make the burial event with its C/S. Then create a death event with the date and a notation the date is uncertain.
Although I do have photo’s from headstones where I later discovered it is a memorial, not the actual burial place. And also have 20th century birth certificates with errors other then plain spelling. (Wrong father etc)
Thanks again or your input @DaveSch
I would not add the note. The absence of a S/C on the event is enough to say this is the best date from the information I have. I may never find the actual s/c proving the event, but the absence of the s/c icon on the event is enough to tell me I am still looking for it. The absence of that s/c icon tells me more than if I had cluttered the event with s/c that only provided clues to that actual information.
I do most of my work from within the FamilyTreeView add-on. FTV has a really nice feature called badges. You can configure FTV to show a badge on each person with the number of events without S/C.
If I find a person in a census record, and the census has either birth date or age, I use this information for adding a birth event without S/C, but with a small note in the ‘Description’ field referring to the census event, which of course has a S/C. In FTV the person will now have a badge with ‘1’ displayed, remembering me to find the birth record in a church book.
If I have no better information and no conflicting information for it, I would use the citation for a picture of a gravestone as the citation for the birth.
If I have a bunch of evidence that needs actual analysis, I would do it in Evidentia and attach my Genealogical Proof Report as the citation.
I use attributes on the event for recording clues. For instance, for a census that gives the age of a person and a birth place, I would add a “place” attribute to their birth event, whose value is the value I read from the census, and a “date” attribute to the same event, whose value is “calculated about …”. You can add the same attribute type with different values, and I add the S/C to these attributes. If the same value is already present, I add the S/C to the existing one.
The citation on the event is reserved for a direct citation (a birth record for a birth event for instance).
I use an attribute called Secondary Sources that I add to events. The Citations tab contains only primary sources for these types of events, the other sources that refer to them are then stored in the attribute
