Would you list parents as witnesses for births?

[jrw 0]

Birth certificates commonly list parents. Trying to decide if they should be listed as witnesses. The mother is obviously always present, so it is trivial that she witnesses. The fact that someone is listed a a father doesnt mean he was present so you dont really know if he was a witness or not. comments?

[Terry Reigel 0]

Birth certificates commonly list parents. Trying to decide if they should be listed as witnesses. The mother is obviously always present, so it is trivial that she witnesses. The fact that someone is listed a a father doesnt mean he was present so you dont really know if he was a witness or not. comments?

A couple of thoughts...

 

- Birth certificates are only one of many different evidences one finds for births. In fact, once you get back a few generations, they are very uncommon. So, would you base your data entry standard on only one of may types of documents that might support the birth tag.

 

- Why would you want to? To see the birth event in the parent's person view? It's already there as the relationship tag. To show in reports? If so, which types? Some users like to do that because they favor the Individual Narrative, which otherwise won't show the parents and children. But the Journal and other ancestor/descendant narratives already show the children and parents. As do the FGS and various charts. Web sites made with Second Site offer options to display parents and children without entering them as witnesses. Consider what the result will be in the types of reports you favor.

 

I don't include them, in view of the above.

[Pierce.Reid 0]

A couple of thoughts...

 

- Birth certificates are only one of many different evidences one finds for births. In fact, once you get back a few generations, they are very uncommon. So, would you base your data entry standard on only one of may types of documents that might support the birth tag.

 

- Why would you want to? To see the birth event in the parent's person view? It's already there as the relationship tag. To show in reports? If so, which types? Some users like to do that because they favor the Individual Narrative, which otherwise won't show the parents and children. But the Journal and other ancestor/descendant narratives already show the children and parents. As do the FGS and various charts. Web sites made with Second Site offer options to display parents and children without entering them as witnesses. Consider what the result will be in the types of reports you favor.

 

I don't include them, in view of the above.

Another thought:

 

- The TMG term "witness" is a bit misleading. It implies the person actually was at the event in question. A more useful term might be the concept of "role", introduced, more or less, from Ultimate Family Tree. In this case, the father definitely had a role to play, even if he was no where near the birth, or even alive at the time. That could also apply to a Probate event, where beneficiaries did nothing more than get mentioned in the will and maybe received some benefit - in fact the "principal" was not even alive at the time.

 

Pierce