Special notations in "Other Information" for easy reference

LegacyUser

Fred Turner said: I am a Consultant at the Edgewood, NM FHC, and do a lot of work attaching sources, specializing in Census records and Find A Grave. I make entries in "Other Information" to aid in documenting these sources.
1. Note if pictures, Obituaries, Death/Birth certificates, etc., appear on Find A Grave or other sources.
2. Note if the License or Bond date has been used as the Marriage Date.
3. Indicate when a wife's Maiden Name and Family name are the same.
4. Add a Military entry for service information from a veteran.s headstone.
5. Record that there are 2 Census records for the same family with different locations. They moved and were counted twice at different places. Rare, but I have fouds 2 instances.
6. An unusual cause of death. Be careful! Some families don't want this shown.
7. Mention an Obituary as having extensive family history/family names.
8. The family had at least xxx additional children (based upon sources).
9. XXX was married with children if a spouse and all children are born after 1909.
10. Note other unusual family situations.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Hi Fred!

I'm curious to know what you use the actual Notes section in the person records for?

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Jennifer Jeffris said: I would also like a twins or multiples option somewhere. Also, died as an infant.

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Tom Huber said: In response to Fred's initial post.

1 - FamilySearch uses/modifies an index provided by Find a Grave. If the index does not include information about other relatives, images, etc., then there is no way that FamilySearch can provide the information. Note that as it is, FamilySearch errantly adds a burial date to the Find a Grave index.
2 - Two things -- I delete the marriage date if it is not available and modify the title of the non-marriage source title to what it is.
3 - This can be done as a note or in the woman's Life Sketch. I have just such a case in one of my ancestral lines. The name was Clark and the source I was using indicated that she was not related to the person she was marrying. The Vital name field is for the woman's birth name and I noted in that reason statement that yes, it was the same as her husband's name. This is an area where it would be nice to set up a note as a source to wherever the birth name appears.
4 - Provide the military information in "Other" and note that it is found on the gravestone for the individual. This is an area where FamilySearch really needs to allow us to individually source each entry in "Other" and has been raised a number of times. It will take redesigning the way that "Other" entries are set up. Currently, they are grouped by type, which was an easy way to set up the entries in that category, but will require some major rework to fix the current issue.
5. I have this on more than one census. Both are in the sources and in the notes for the individuals involved, I've indicated that the family is enumerated for more than one census location. In one case, it was obvious that a neighbor supplied the information for the farm (probably because there was a house on the farm, but the family itself lived in a nearby farm.
6. Include any unusual cause of death as newspaper clippings, death certificates, or other documentation in memories. Do not rely upon hearsay ("Aunt Mabel reported that Johnny drowned in the irrigation ditch.").
7. Include the obituary as a memory. It is self explanatory. Memories can be and should be set up as sources on the source page.
8. Children can be entered as blanks for the given name and unknown as the sex. I have several of these, including several that have gravestones without names. I make sure I document the entries as much as possible, including with sources.
9. Provide this information in the life sketch. This is a moving target and as such should not be recorded as anything more than a note or entry in the Life Sketch area.
10. Note or Life Sketch information.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The birth dates for the children (shown in the Family Section) should suffice. The idea of recording (twin) goes back to a practice that was common with written Family Group sheets. It really wasn't necessary, except as an indicator that the birth dates for the twins was not a mistake.

With the computer record, one can easily record as part of the reason statement for the person's name that they are a twin to (name), or one of the triplets...

As I mentioned in my response to Fred's item 3 (below) that it would be nice if we could set up a note or discussion as a source.

In the meantime, multiple births on the same date can be set up as a story in memories with each of the twins' names tagged back to their record. Memories can be set up as a source, which then can be tagged to the birth information and name. The title in the memory as the source title, which should say something like "Twins".

Since FamilySearch records only dates (and not times as part of the date), the memory can provide those details if they are known.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Note, information that is wanted can be set up as a custom event or custom fact in Other. While sourcing those is currently not available (and won't be until the grouping by type is abandoned) use the title of the custom event for whatever you want to highlight.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Not even that complicated. I always just create a note on each person titled something like "Born as a twin (with optional PID)". Whenever FS gets around to supporting tagged notes, this would be even more visible.

And if I've had a problem with twins constantly being merged, I'll create a discussion with the identical title and content as the note and including the current PID of the other twin. Since discussions can't be deleted by others and always carry over a merge, a bad merge will be obvious from the two conflicting discussions. And the person doing the bad merge will not be able to remove the evidence that what they did was wrong.