Adding witness to a marriage
We should have a dedicated possibility to add the witnesses to a marriage. Now if I click on "Add fact" the only possibility is to state there are no children in the relationship.
Witnesses are often important relationships to a couple. Se whould add them preferably even with the ID code.
Thank you in advance.
Comments
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Except for the specific label of "witness", you can already do this for individuals, in the Other Relationships section.
I think for a wedding witness, from the current list, I'd probably use "neighbor" or "relative".
I've been recommending since the Other Relationships feature first came out that the labels/categories need to be broader, and there needs to be an optional text field for the specifics. For example, I'd combine "apprenticeship" and "employment" into a single "workplace associate" category (thus encompassing "coworker" as well), and I'd expand "godparent" into "godparent, sponsor, witness". (It could perhaps be labeled something like "vital event participant".)
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi Since "Godparent" was introduced as an "Other Relationship", I've been using it strictly for Catholic or Anglican baptismal sponsors. A lot of the marriage-records I've been working with list godparents as well. Often one or both of the godparents from the wedding are godparents to the couple's children, or some of them, as well, but not always.
(And in certain years, the witnesses were not identified by name, just by role in the church, e.g. the sacristans; or even just "those found present"!)
The locution in those records that means "resident of" a place is literally "neighbor of", so I guess I could add "Neighbor" where a witness-at-anything or godparent-at-wedding is identified as resident of the same place. And sometimes witnesses at the declarations before the banns specifically said they knew the parties from childhood because they were neighbors. But other times they were from elsewhere.
I wouldn't recommend changing the existing categories, but "Other Vital Event Participant" might be a good addition. And we can already add Notes for a couple relationship, but custom Facts or some set of Other Relationships to the couple as such might be useful as well.
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