A Children Status Report

I have an idea for a new report, but I don't want to ask for it yet as I might be the only person it could benefit.

So let me start at the beginning. On the 1911 Census it gives a great piece of information. Which is this


I have now recorded this detail in my FHS by creating a Custom Fact Called "Children Status".
This creates a nice visual record on the person that looks like this,

This information is very useful, because it can now make you look for other family members. In this case I had 10 children, but now I've used the parents names to search for children I have found one other.

So my first suggestion/tip is that other people should start to create this Fact and record these details, in this format. This for FTM but you can create custom Facts in most every FHS. You need to make sure you keep to the format because when there are a few of us using this fact, then Alexander may write a report for us!



So, the idea of the report is to identify parents and their children, and using the Children Status Fact and the 1911 census details, tell us how many we have found, how many are missing, and in this case could possibly suggest the range in which we should look (the father died in 1887).



So before we can ask for this report, I'd like people to start recording the Children Status Fact, and then if they can post here that they are, and when we get a few takers, we can ask Alexander what he thinks.

 

Is this a shared fact ie: it's recorded against a family rather than against an individual? The report will be really difficult if it's against and individual as I couldn't really tell which family it might be if there are multiple ones.

 

I don't have it as a shared fact currently, but I guess there is no real reason why it couldn't be. I do have a number of cases where a spouse has died, but the details have still been provided, in deed my example above is exactly that issue.

 

The GEDCOM standard has the following standard tag:

So as you can see they suggest if recorded against an individual it should be ALL children for that person and if against a family it's the children for that family whether or not they all yet appear in the family listed. However this fact type is only meant for a single numerical value not three values with text so a custom type is probably better.

 

Yes, I'd heard about the count_of_children fact but can't think of a nice way of using it.

 

True, it's recorded against the female, but it is a statement about the current marriage. As such, I now agree with Alexander that it should be a shared fact.
Also this will make it easier when Alexander has to create a report for us

 

Yes, me too. Even though the enumerator puts a line through it, the data can still be read. In fact I had one relation put down the stats for his 1st marriage against himself, and the stats for his current wife against her, which was very helpful.

 

All my Children Status Facts have now been changed to shared facts. Everything is looking rosey.

 

I should point out that Alexander has implemented this report and it's looking pretty good.

Anyone else using it yet?

 

There are instructions for adding a Lost Cousins fact to Roots Magic on the documentation tab. The difference is it should be a Family fact and its name should be Children Status.

Once you start entering data it should be of the format:

Total x, Alive y, Dead z

If you have data you know is different from what it should be eg: head of household wrote the wrong thing or misunderstood the form. Then you can add some text and as long as it includes the word ignore then it will be ignored from the exception reports.

eg: you could write:

Total 5, Alive 3, Dead 2. John Smith included children from both his marriages - Ignore

That would then mean it was counted as having a Children status for the report that shows which 1911 census entries are missing one. However it would be excluded from the report that shows mismatched children numbers vs Children status counts.

 

Glad you're liking it Doreen, it's just one of many useful reports that have recently been added.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. I can add Living as a variant text. It will also allow combinations of colons : and commas, as well as allowing writing it the other way round. ie: 4 Total, 2 Alive, 2 Dead

 

I only chose Alive as it was shorter to write then Living.