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census data entry help

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I am still new with the program even though I am approaching my one year anniversary with TMG. I feel that I am at a standstill with how to enter my census information. Because I am so new with the program I am not overly concerned about the sentence structure but I use the program to mainly organize all of the years of infomation that I have gathered. I want to be aware of who the head of the household is and who lived at the same address in any given census year. In the citation memo under the tag entry screen is where I record the pertinent information on the individual. At this point, as I had imported my information from Family Tree Maker, each person has his own census tag. I think that I should be doing it differently and having the head and ?spouse? as primary people and the family members listed as witnesses. Does this sound logical? If I do it this way where can I put my little census information about each person? I am sorry that this is long and may sound confusing. But I am confused. Anyones help is appreciated.

Always,

Debbie

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Guest Michael Dietz

Debbie:

I am sure you will receive many answers to your questions. The entry of census data is an ongoing and very much debated topic, especially because of the difference in the data recorded in each of the census years. I have arrived at what I think is a workable compromise between minimal data and massive amounts of work to enter the data for at least the 1850-1880 years. The method is easily adapted for 1900 - 1930, I just have not got around to it yet. Unfortunately any solution will require some sentence structures to present the data. I have four and a half entry tags and a name tag to record all the data available from 1850 - 1880. In the descriptions below you will notice a period preceding the tag name. I use that period to distinguish my custom tag from the standard tag. Of course you can name the tags however you like.

 

Entry tag one: named .Census, has two roles. Everybody (in the census) has this entry tag. I also cite the source on this tag.

Role 1: named Principal, sentence is "On [D], he was enumerated in the Federal Census of [L] with the name of [P]"

Role 2: named Student, male sentence is "On [D], he was enumerated in the Federal Census of [L] with the name of [P]. He had attended school during the year"

I also have a custom name tag of Name-Census, sentence is "[PF] was recorded on one or more census and indexed by the name of [N]." I use this name in the name selection box when I enter the .Census tag (upper right of the entry screen).

 

Entry tag two: named z85Addl for the 1850 census. 1860 is named z86Addl, 1870 and 1880 similarly. The reason for the different tags for each census year is due to the change in the data recorded in the years. Everybody has this entry tag. There is only the principal role in each. The male sentence for the 1850 census is "[+]. His age is given as [M1] and color as [M2]<. His real estate was valued at [M3]><. He was [M4]><. He was [M5]><. He was [M6]><. [M7]>"

This allows me to enter all the subfields in the census appropriate for the individual. Because it has the concatenation it appends to the .Census tag.

 

Entry tag two and a half: I have a custom occupation tag, named .Occupation, with the standard principal role plus a Census role which has the male sentence: "[+]. His occupation was [M]" Again this would append onto the previous tag. Obviously only those individuals with an occupation given use this tag.

 

Entry tag three: named Census Head. Used only by the head of the household.

The principal role male sentence is "[+]. [PF] is listed as the head of the household numbered [M1] residing in dwelling numbered [M2]. <[R:Witness Sngl] was listed as a member in his household.><[R:Witness] were listed as members in his household.>"

The Witness Sngl male sentence is "He is listed as a member of the household numbered [M1] residing in dwelling [M2] which was headed by [P], and context implies he was [WM] [PF]."

The Witness male sentence is "He is listed as a member of the household numbered [M1] residing in dwelling [M2] which was headed by [P], and context implies he was [WM] [PF]."

The members of the household (except for the head) are listed as witnesses. I place their relationship to the head in the witness memo, such things as "the wife of", "the son of" etc. It is necessary to have the Witness Sngl role when there is only one other member of the household, such as a husband and wife, in order to have the correct punctuation.

 

Entry tag four: named Census Index. Everybody has this tag.

I have an 1850 role, an 1860 role, etc. for each year. The sentence is very similar between them.

The 1850 sentence is "Data associated with [OBJ] from the 1850 federal census appears on line [M1] of the sheet stamped [M2] which is identified as image [M3], found on page [M4] of [M5] of the indexed database for [L] available on Ancestry.com." I then cite the Ancestry.com source for the actual indexing of the census. This tag can easily be shortened to have just the line and sheet number.

 

How do I date these tags in order to have them appear in a logical sequence in a report. I use the sort date field. The .Census tag gets the actual date given on the census, eg., Sep 15, 1850. This date also is in the sort date field. For the z85Addl tag I put the census date + 1, eg., Sep 16, 1850, and leave the date field blank. The occupation tag gets census date + 2, eg, Sep 17, 1850, in the sort date field with a blank date field. And the Head tag gets census date + 3, eg., Sep 18, 1850, with a blank date field. I put a large date in the Index sort date, eg., 2685, in order to put that tag at the bottom of the report but it could easily have the census date + 4, eg., Sep 19, 1850, with a blank date field.

 

That is it. Although it looks complicated it is actually rather easy to implement. It does require some attention to detail but has another advantage. I can place the image of the census page on the Head tag and that image will appear for each of the members with only one copy of the image in the database. If I were to place the image on each of the members I would have that number of images in the database.

 

For your purposes, the way you have described it, you would only need the Census tag and the Head tag. However you would not have the detail available from the census, i.e., age, property value, etc.

 

Here are two snippets from the narrative report for my wife's great-grandfather. The first snippet has the census, addl, occupation, and head tags in it. The second snippet is the index tag.

 

On Jun 25, 1870, he was enumerated in the Federal Census of the Second Ward, Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, with the name of Joseph A. Bell. His age is given as 32 and color as white. His real estate was valued at $3,000. His personal estate was valued at $200. His occupation was a carpenter. Joseph is listed as the head of the household numbered 144 residing in dwelling numbered 135. Mariamne Purdum and Roberta Bell were listed as members in his household;

 

Data associated with him from the 1870 federal census appears on line 26 of the sheet stamped 433A which is identified as image 188, found on page 17 of 31 of the indexed database for the Second Ward, Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, available on Ancestry.com.

 

Here is the snippet from his wife:

 

On Jun 25, 1870, she was enumerated in the Federal Census of the Second Ward, Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, with the name of May Ann Bell . Her age is given as 33 and color as white. She is listed as a member of the household numbered 144 residing in dwelling 135 which was headed by Joseph Asbury Beall, and context implies she was the wife of Joseph.

 

Census data has always been a bugaboo to enter because there is so much to it and it is different every census. I hope this gives you some ideas.

Mike

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Hi Debbie,

 

You have hit on a major topic of considerable discussion. I would suggest that you start by reviewing the many :rolleyes: examples of custom tags for census data that users have suggested in the Sentence Structures forum. The one I use :D is my CensusEnum tag. You might search within that forum for the keyword "census" to see the many relevant postings.

 

The “good news” and the “bad news” of census data is that there is so much (some have even suggested “too much”) information provided by an enumeration entry that a genealogist may want to record. The “good news” and the “bad news” of TMG is that there are so many different ways that the program can be used and customized to record that data.

 

It is confusing :confused: to decide how to approach recording census data. It is both a source record that can be cited as the documentation for various types of event tags (names, residence, birth based on recorded age and location, parent/child/sibling/other relationships, occupations, etc.), and the act of enumeration is an event unto itself deserving of its own event tag. As such, recording census data needs to follow your standards both for sources and for events. Because of this, it is important to carefully decide upon your own methodology for census data entry: what data is recorded, where, and how. It should be clear that there is no “right” way to do this. While some may urge recording everything, others may find it easier to only record what is of interest to them while ensuring a good reference pointer to the original source if others want to find more. However, the method must make sense to you, and encourage you to record all the data you wish to record in a manner that allows you to find it and report it easily.

 

You are very wise :thumbsup: to consider now what should be your data entry standard for this data before you have too much entered and need to change.

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Entering a separate census tag for each person misses the opportunity to link the members of the household both on screen and in reports. As Mike says, there are lots of methods used to do this in TMG. See my article on Managing Census Information for my thoughts on the topic. There are also links there to some articles on other methods.

 

I would suggest you not delay thinking about sentence structures unless you are totally convinced you will never want to use Narrative output. You can a void a lot of future cleanup if you pay some attention to output issues as you enter data.

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