I have tried a number of ways to handle the following scenario I am using my own least worst option but was wondering if others had thoughts/alternatives.
How to handle a Marriage in the UK post 1837
In the UK all marriages have to be registered using a standard format provided by the GRO
A couple marry in church say St James they sign two identical registers.
One register copy stays within the church (unless the church closes)
One register copy is sent to the local Register Office where it is copied and sent to the GRO
The GRO then produces an index.
So Repositories for the marriage certificate maybe
The Church
2a) The Register Office
2b) The local Records Office (used when capacity of Register Office exceeded)
The GRO
Publishers where the data has been viewed by the researcher could be
Viewing the actual register on Ancestry/MyHeritage etc
Viewing the actual register in the Church
Purchasing a copy certificate from the local Register Office
Purchasing a copy certificate from the GRO
The Church (will be a Source) will have a Citation eg Parish of St James Manchester, Reg No 55, Page 62, Record 6
The Local Register Office (will be a Source) will have a Citation eg St James Manchester, Year 1872, Subdistrict Ancoats, Code 101/15/25
The GRO (will be a Source) will have a Citation eg Year 1872, Qtr Dec, Registration District Manchester, Vol 88, Page 11.
I have left out currently that the Publishers may have their own Citation (Reference) system on the basis that there is no hierarchy in GRAMPS to deal with this
I’d rather set the Church or the Register Office as the repository, not the source. The source would be Year 1872, Qtr Dec, Registration District Manchester, Vol 88, and the citation would be page 11 of this source.
I have always been puzzled by Publisher info data. Presently I use this field for the official designation of the repository owner. But, I could also use it in cases where the publisher changed the title of the original document in a non-trivial way. I store the catalog index in Abbreviation and the field can no longer be used for anything else.
As usual, there is no stone-carved rule. Use available fields to fit your needs and habits (as long as you don’t create an obvious contradiction).
Also, if those copies in different places are actually identical copies, you can have a single source with multiple repositories (just like you can have the same book in different libraries). For each repository, you should be able to add a repository-specific identification number for the given source.
I have given up attaching a defined source to several repositories for two main reasons:
I use Abbreviation to store the catalog index of the source
Probability is rather low that this source has the same catalog index in two repos
I have implemented a way to generate the full citation URL from “fragments” taken in Repo, Source and Citation records to mitigate effort to fix “link rot” in the internet. Once again, there is a low probability that the fragments are identical in the final URLs or even that the URLs have the same structure.
In the end, I prefer to create two independent Repo-Source-Citation chains to minimse maintenance problems.
That is probably the limiting aspect of your approach. I store the repository-specific identifier in the reference field, which is part of the source-repository relation. This way, I can have a different number per repository for the same source.
I think that this is mainly intended to record the publication information for published material.
Some people also regard the websites serving information from online databases as publishers. The Gedcom standard that the Gramps is based on is good at recording published works and artifacts and documents in archives. It is not so good at online data and doesn’t handle layered citations.
This is my source for the England & Wales Birth registers. I am in the U.S. so have to rely on Ancestry & FamilySearch. It shows how I use Publishers even for a web site.
Some interesting thoughts but not how I was taught to conceive a
Citation if I can give another example that of a Census Citation
Repository The National Archives, Kew
Source 1901 Census
Citation PRO Ref RG13 Piece 3758, Folio 68, Page 8
I should be able to walk through the entrance at Kew, present the number
RG13 Piece 3758, Folio 68, Page 8 to the nearest Archivist and they
would be able to straight away produce the page that contains the
relevant household details.
PRO Ref refers to Public Records Office
RG11 is the code for 1901 Census
3758 is the number of the piece
68 is the number of the folio
8 is the number of the page
If I was being pedantic and on some pages where I have more than one
household present
I will add the household schedule number
Alternatively and totally over the top you could add the Line number for
each member of the household which I would not dream of doing.
phil
The only time I would use Familysearch would be for death registrations post 1985 and that is because they show the full date of birth not just the year as on the GRO.
Thank you for the links. I guess the basic issue is workflow. When I am working a person and their families, everyone gets plugged into both FS and Ancestry. I had the register page (probably from Ancestry) that FreeBMD made available on a quick test I just did. Using FreeBMD I would need to remember that it was available to me. Most of my English relatives came to the colonies in the 1600’s making most searches difficult.
EDIT: To prove my point of having to remember FreeBMD is available to me, I was going to add the site into my UK folder… it was already there.
Back that far you have to be having a link into the aristocracy who would have published genealogy to make progress.
I can only get back to 1700 and into a morass of ag labs, miners and cotton/silk workers, not much paperwork for them and even if there was it would be old English script or Latin.
There is the New England Historic Genealogical Society. They have been publishing early VR and church records, as well as research from professional genealogists since 1847. For the last couple of decades, their work has focused on “who were and where did they come from” some of the earliest immigrants. This is the only type of research I add to my tree going back to the old country.
A genealogist gave a talk at my local library. As he said, if you find a tree that says you are descended from Charlemagne, do not add it to your research.
An interesting looking site whilst it is probably true that neither of us is related to Charlemagne I would not rule it out Robert the Bruce is a favourite locally and there are some well proven trees for him.
I have a DNA match whose tree goes back to the 800’s in France I have never worked up the courage to ask him can he prove it fortunately it is not a branch of his family that I am on.
