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Sentence variable for relationship of witness to principal

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I use Second Site to produce a web site. I have custom tags for the census. A portion of one of the sentences currently is : In the census taken on the night of April 2nd 1911 Ethel Utting was included in the household of Stephen William Utting in Bracken Brae, Thorpe Hamlet, Norwich, Norfolk, England.

 

Using a variable, is there a way to get : In the census taken on the night of April 2nd 1911 Ethel Utting was included in the household of Stephen William Utting, her father <brother> <uncle> <step father> <etc>, in Bracken Brae, Thorpe Hamlet, Norwich, Norfolk, England.

 

If not, could someone point me to where I can obtain some ideas on how to set up roles to achieve similar. Of course I would prefer the variable, as I have thousands of census tags already ;-)

 

I only use the above tags for people who are related to the head of the house, but the relationship could be by blood OR by marriage. Note that where a dual+ relationship exists (and in some of those Norfolk villages they surely do) I would be happy to have the closest relationship in the sentence, but it would be GREAT if they could all be mentioned, in order of closeness.

 

I have created separate census tags for people in 'institutions' (prison, ship or hotel etc) and for those living/working within a family home (servant, visitor, boarder), so a witness NOT being related to the principal is not an issue. I only use 1 principal, all other people in the household are witnesses.

 

www.shirley-elrick.com

 

Thanks

 

SHIRLEY

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Sorry people this is NOT what I typed. Gremlins again....

 

Using a variable, is there a way to get : In the census taken on the night of April 2nd 1911 Ethel Utting was included in the household of ?????????Bracken Brae, Thorpe Hamlet, Norwich, Norfolk, England.

 

??????? should read "her father <brother> <uncle> <etc>

 

SHIRLEY

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Hi Shirley,

 

I would highly recommend first reviewing Terry's Tips about Using Roles here.

 

Based on your example, I assume that you wish this sentence to be for the Witness that is assigned a role in the household. For example, if you have a Witness role called "ChildFather" the female Witness sentence could be something like:

 

In the census taken on [D] [W] was included in the household of her father, [P1]

 

You could have a companion male Witness sentence for this "ChildFather" role with "his".

 

Likewise you could have a role "ChildMother" to cover the case where the mother was the head of household and you wanted "mother" in those two Witness sentences.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,

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Shirley,

 

No, there are no variables that spell out the relationship, other than for parents. You can get what you want by use of Roles, but you have to define them and then assign them to the correct people. Some users try to define Roles for each possible relationship that you might find, but I think that's doomed to failure. I define them only for the children, and the deal with all the others in the Memo. My method is described in my article on Census Tags.

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Shirley,

 

Like Terry, for my own custom Census tags I do not have a role for every possible combination. But my previous post was trying to explain how you could possibly do what it was you seemed to ask.

 

I prefer to use split memo parts for both the main memo and witness memos. I then make the standard Tag Type sentences generic enough that appropriate text in some memo part works for most any case. It also allows each tag to look and sound a bit different.

 

My custom Census tag is similar to Terry's, where P1 is the head of household, in that I only have a general Witness role for Child, a role for Spouse, and a generalized role for anyone else. (But my tag types are a bit more complex because I also include Census "pseudo" people.) A simplified version of my "Child" role is:

 

The 1840 Census in [L] enumerated [WM1] as [WM3] in the household of [P1].

 

My witness memo will have the enumeration name of this child in [WM1], their enumerated age, etc. in [WM2], something like "his son" in [WM3], and any optional comments I might like to make about this child's entry in [WM4]. For example:

 

Nathan||7, M, born Ohio, attended school within the year||his son

 

A portion of the male sentence for P1 Head of Household can then be:

 

[M1] was enumerated in the 1840 Census in [L] as head of household.

 

Hope this gives you (further) ideas,

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Thanks people. You have given me all I needed. I first wanted to make CERTAIN that there was NO way to get what I hope to achieve by crafting a sentence WITHOUT using additional roles - and I now know I can't. Then you have given me ideas on how to do what I want using roles. I will check out Terry's Census Tags and review your suggestios Michael, before crafting my roles and their sentences. The good thing is that I don't HAVE to change my existing format. I can just add a new set of census tags, which I use for new people and to gradually move existing people over to.

 

I have a panel in Second Site that lists addesses by date of a person, using census and voter tags (regardless of principal or witness roles), and I don't want to risk mucking that up. I think that will just mean I include the new census tags into the ones that show up in the panel.

 

Thanks again - SHIRLEY

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Guest PhilDee

Shirley,

 

The witness sentence for all my Census roles is:

 

[R:Wife] appeared on the census as the wife of the head of the household, [P] ---> Or R:son etc

 

That results in a witness sentence of Joan Smith appeared on the census of 1910 as the wife of the head of household, John Henry Smith.

 

If you don't use the role you can just enter the variable [W] at the start of the sentence

 

 

Phil

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