DeAnna Burghart

I've updated my so-called "Cheat Sheets" for v7 -- nothing earth-shattering, but I thought some might like to know they've been done. You can find them here.

I put pretty much everything in Other, unless it's intended as a primary event alternative. Address is only used (I think) for purposes of generating address labels, which I never do in TMG.

OOoooo, I like this one. Two enthusiastic thumbs up.

Principal: To date, no research has been done on [OBJ] NonePlanned: No additional research on [OBJ] is planned as of this writing. Pending: Research on [OBJ] is still pending.

These are sentence variations that I use to indicate when no further information is known about someone, or when I haven't bothered to go looking for it. A Principal and two alternate Roles supply variations and nuances. Principal: Nothing further is known of [OBJ] <[M]> Dead End: Despite extensive research, nothing further is known of [OBJ] <[M]> First Attempt: Initial research surveys have turned up no additional information about [OBJ] <[M]> The fanciful might consider adding variations like Athena: [OBJ] apparently sprang, fully formed, direct from Zeus's forehead into the middle of eastern Kentucky in the early 1800s ... But then, that might be too cynical.

Sometimes, I just want to rattle the kids' names off without diving any further down the tree. Perhaps the relative in question is only distantly related. Perhaps I don't know more than their names, and the formal format is superfluous. Perhaps it's a step family that I'm not following. Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood and don't like their picture. Whatever the reason, I created this sentence for those times I don't feel like falling down the rabbit hole. [P]<|and [PO]> had [M1] children<, [M2]> [M1] is obviously a number, [M2] is a list of the children's given names, or perhaps just what little I know. Examples: John and Sally had three children, all born at Norfolk: Sally Sue, John Jr., and Asa A.F.W. No further information is known. John and Sally had three children, presumably born at Norfolk. Their names are not known. John and Sally had three children, Sally Sue, John Jr., and Asa. John and Sally had no children.

It never seemed quite right to me to state that a child immigrated on a given date unless they traveled alone. Presumably, it's not as though a six-year-old had much say in the matter. I do have one 14-year-old independent immigrant (apprenticed to an armsmaker in the New World after his parents' death) but for the rest, I settled on this: WithParents: [W] immigrated to [L6] with his parents in [Y]<. [WM]><[M0]> WithParents-Date: [W] arrived in <[L4]><[L5]> with his parents <[D]><. [WM]><[M0]> There are similar variations for WithMother, WithFather, WithFamily, etc.

After reading "So and so died date location age" a few thousand times, I got pretty bored with it. I also wanted to add some reference to significant deaths in some narratives, i.e. references to being widowed, orphaned, losing a young child or sibling. So I added a few scads of roles and created some custom sentences to add variety. Note: This is very much a work in progress. In addition to using local sentence modifications, I continue to add new variations as they appeal to me. Roles (Principal): Deceased-age, Deceased-exactage Roles (Witnesses): Widowed, SurvivorAge, WasWith, WasNotWith, Widowed 2, Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, SurvivingChild. Deceased-age sentence: [RG:Deceased-age] died <[L]><[D]>< at [A]><[M1]> Deceased-exactage sentence: [RG:Deceased-exactage] died <[M1]><[L]><[D]>< at [AE] of age><. [M2]>. Widowed sentence: [RF:Widowed] was widowed by <[RF:Deceased-age]'s><[RF:Deceased-exactage]'s> death <[D]><[L]><[M1]><[WM]> Widowed 2 sentence: [RF:Widowed 2] was widowed when <[RF:Deceased-age]><[RF:Deceased-exactage]> died <[M1]><[D]><[L]><[WM]> SurvivorAge sentence: [R:SurvivorAge] was [WM1] when [P1] <and [P2]> died <[WM2]> <[D]><. [WM3]><[M0]> WasWith sentence: [R:WasWith] was with [RS:WasWith] [WM1] [P1] <[L]> when [P1] died <[D]><. [WM2]><[M0]> WasNotWith sentence: [R:WasNotWith] was not with [RS:WasNotWith] [WM1] [P1] <[L]> when [P1] died <[D]><. [WM2]><[M0]> EDIT: I should have pointed out that RS is the witness possessive form (his/her) and WM1 is in this case meant to store the relationship, so the sentence would read something like "John Smith was (or was not) with his mother Jane Smith when she died 23 Jan 1872 blah blah blah." Obviously, this format would require that the sentence be the first in a paragraph, or P1 would provide "she" both times. It could easily be altered to PF or whatever you prefer. END EDIT Mother, father, etc. are all '--' excluded sentences by default, but having those roles allows me to mark turning points on a person's detail screen. So, for instance, I can add John Smith as a witness to his mother Jane Smith's death with the role SurvivingChild. Since John was 48 and living six states away at the time it might not show up obviously otherwise, and may not merit an immediate, concurrent reference in his narrative, but since it shows up on John's detail screen, I now have a visual reminder to consider the significance (if any) of that death in his story.

Add a Californian to the list then. I like it, and I think it's very well thought out, as far as it goes. I'm sure that the programmers would have other questions, but honestly, this is long overdue, and I think there are many of us more than willing to supply answers to those questions.

Could be it's throwing off the calculation based on the circa date window? I don't know.

At the risk of being disgustingly obvious, you're positive you didn't typo the birth year as 1991? I've done that sort of thing ...

I use E.D. (and sometimes S.D. in large cities) simply because it is often possible to mis-read page numbers. It's rare that it would actually make a difference with my data, but being in the habit means that when it would make a difference, the information is there. In addition, knowing the E.D. in one year can make it easier to locate a family in previous years. For instance, the 1910 census requries a street address to locate a family in many large cities in order to locate the E.D. If you've got an E.D. from a previous census year, sites like this one will help you locate an entry in previous years. For census entries prior to 1910, it matters less in my experience, but I generally record any and all information that would help me identify the record. My exception is that I have taken to discarding the line numbers unless the family and dwelling numbers are likely to be confused. At that level, the line numbers usually become redundant, and it becomes tedious to change the line number in every single CD (and thus to read it in every footnote).

I'm returning very late to the party; sorry. Life intrudes. My original answer to this devolved into quite a tangent, which I've sent by PM rather than clutter the thread. Much abbreviated version: Correspondent=Y is for people I've exchanged letters/emails with. I use it to help locate them quickly, and to make sure I don't inadvertently do violence to their records. I've been known to do some ruthless pruning of tangent descendancies; I'm all about the ancestry, baby!

Exactly. I do that often. And then I really irritate myself beause in this respect, for some reason, I expect TMG to respond like a browser; so I intuitively click my fourth mouse button (which I have hardcoded to Back) and then get annoyed when it doesn't work. Oh, yes. This doesn't work here, I have to use the bookmarks. grumblegrumblegrouse. I don't know *why* I expect it to behave like a browser, since I've been using it for almost 10 years now. Nevertheless, I do. D-

I'd be just as happy to have a true "back" trail through the Last Person Viewed (instead of just the last one). 90% of the time when I'm futtering around with the bookmarks, it's because I'm trying to rethread my way to my main subject after falling down a rabbit hole. Would be nice to just be able to Back-back-back, OK, here I am again. The other 10% of the time I'm using the bookmarks to change family lines for whatever reason, and I have those set up accordingly.