Description of Residence should be searchable, not just the town of residence

LegacyUser

qquatsch said: I think it would be helpful to find people who lived at the same address/same house. Sometimes it is really helpful to find relatives, or help with incomplete records.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Welcome to the community-powered feedback forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.

Searches of historical records are made against the index of those records, not against the record itself.

With respect to census records in some instances, specific information is included, but not always.

The earlier the census enumeration (in the United States), the less likely that an address is included on the census itself. If the family lived outside of a town, any address will not be included.

Note: in those cases, a Post Office is listed, but that is not an indicator that the family lived in the town where the post office was located. It only indicates that the family was served by that Post Office, which may not be in the same county.

Prior to 1850, only the head of the house was recorded and the ages of males and females. for the 1850, 1860, and 1870 enumerations, there was no relationship to the head of the house recorded as part of the enumeration. but the names of all those who lived in that household were recorded. From 1880 to the present time, the relationship is provided.

LegacyUser

qquatsch said: I am not referring to what is in the records. Sometimes the address is included, sometimes it isn't. For Italian records, there are no census records online, but users can add this information manually in the box called "description of residence" when they add information in the Residence entry (including the year too).

The residence is searchable in the Find functions, but the description of residence (the address) is not. It would be helpful if it was.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: FamilySearch is still under development, so something of this nature may be available in the future.

In what you are looking for in the massive tree, each entry would have to include the specific information you are searching for. I know a number of people descended from Italian immigrants and they would have to add the information (which is not something that many of them would necessarily do) when they record residence information.

The idea is a good one, but it is dependent upon users voluntarily adding the information. Without all the descendants providing that information for their Italian ancestors (and not necessarily restricted to Italy), any search using more than a town is going to miss a lot of entries.

So my question to you is, how would you notify or request that those users with Italian roots enter (where they could find them) the residence information beyond that of the town into the record of their ancestors?

LegacyUser

qquatsch said: I understand that it is dependent the users adding the info. I add a lot of ancestors, not just mine. I do all entire towns, and I would like to add that information all the time because it can be really helpful to figure out who lived in the same house. Sometimes, the death records do no contain the wife or the husband of a deceased. If I could look up who lived in that town at that address (or at least the number), I might trace to which family this person could belong to. I have done it in the past, but I would have to be lucky and search with a last name and check the residence.

I am not sure I would want everybody to add that information. For the towns I am doing (the Bergamo province of Italy), the records are not even visible, only linked, so nobody would have access to the data only from the FS site. They would have to go to the place where the records are hosted (Beni Culturali site).

I guess the fields for the record entries never considered this possibility, outside of the census records. And I have seen American ancestors that included multiple residences entries, attached through the tool from the census records.I can see that this is not really possible to do with birth and death records.
Thanks for your quick replies.