Marriage Events and Sources
There must be a way to program an easier method of saving of sources to marriages. The current method of having to save records to my source box, return to the person profile, open the couple relationship, add sources from source box, then edit the marriage event, then tag sources is quite cumbersome. Attaching marriage records to individuals only has the option to create a marriage event when a marriage record is saved to a spouse. And even then only if a new marriage event is created. If there are 6 records for the same marriage, using this method creates 6 marriage events and attaches records only for the 2nd party in the process. Both methods leave a lot to be desired. I have found when reviewing profiles there are two scenarios: either there are no records tagged to the marriage events or there are multiple events for the same marriage. Correcting these is painful. On the subject of marriage events, there should be events available for marriage license (which sometimes did not result in a marriage), marriage contract, and marriage settlement. Separation as an event would also be helpful in establishing a "couple timeline". Description in marriage events would be nice to be able to record by whom the marriage was performed, or the location of the marriage event such as "home of the bride" or "JP's office".
Answers
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@Kerry Day_1 Thank you for reaching out. I agree, the process for attaching a source to a marriage is cumbersome. This issue has been discussed many times in the community. Here's a link to them: https://community.familysearch.org/en/search?domain=discussions&query=marriage%20source&scope=site&categoryIDs[0]=971&includeChildCategories=true&source=community
I will ask if there is a plan, in the future, to change and simplify the process. I will report back.
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@Kerry Day_1 You raise excellent points, which as has been noted, have been discussed many times (for good reason).
I'd like to address one thing you said: "If there are 6 records for the same marriage, using this method creates 6 marriage events and attaches records only for the 2nd party in the process." Without addressing all the other relevant issues, I'd like to clarify that last clause.
When the source linker presents a marriage record, then both the bride and groom (and perhaps their parents) will be shown in the source linker. Because the bride and groom are each presented in the source linker, each will have their own individual ATTACH button, and thus the source will be attached to each of them as individuals (assuming the user actually chooses to click those two distinct ATTACH buttons). Fortunately it is not the case that it "attaches records only for the 2nd party."
Besides the two individual profiles, the other important data element is the couple relationship that is shared between those two individuals. When there is a marriage event, it is shown in the source linker only for the 2nd party in the process. But as long as that marriage event is moved to the right, the event will be connected to the couple relationship (as you noted); in addition, the source record will also be attached to that shared couple relationship. I can see how the fact that the event is only presented for the 2nd party might lead one to incorrectly assume that the 1st party is somehow overlooked in the attaching, but since this part of the process deals with the shared couple relationship, both parties are actually affected equally by the attaching of the source and the adding of the event to the couple relationship.
And for those interested in diving a bit deeper into a technical detail, there is a good reason why the marriage event is only shown for the 2nd party. The source linker handles many scenarios. One relevant scenario is where the bride and groom in a marriage do not yet have a couple relationship joining them together. That may be because one of the parties doesn't even exist in Family Tree yet, but may be added through the source linker as the user works through the process of attaching this source record. Because the couple relationship doesn't yet exist as the user is dealing with the 1st party, there is no way to add the event or attach the source to the couple relationship. Only when the process proceeds to the 2nd party (perhaps creating a new person profile for the 2nd party) are the prerequisite conditions satisfied to ensure that the couple relationship exists to which the event and source can be connected.
Clearly there will be cases where the couple relationship and both individual profiles already exist when the source linker presents a marriage record, but since those prerequisites are not guaranteed to be fulfilled when the source linker presents the 1st party, to have a consistent user experience, the marriage event is always shown in the source linker for the 2nd party.
These conditions for when a source record is attached to a couple relationship are not at all obvious. It's great that many people are advocating for improvements in this area. It's by no means a simple engineering task to cover all the necessary scenarios in a simpler user experience, but it would be helpful if improvements could be made.
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