I appreciate your perspective Jerry 
. Definitely not “arguing” with ya 
.
Within the framework of how I organize my research, your example #2 contains 7 discreet facts, each documented by the Census event and evidenced by the Census record.:
- Name
- Place of residence
- Gender
- Ethnicity
- Year of birth (assumed / likely)
- Education
- Father
I guess you could say I’m a fact splitter and a moderate source lumper. Harkening back to the recent discussion on place names, I’d split “Birth” fact if I could.
Distilling complex documents into individualized clusters of facts gives me the ability to then pull in other sources to support any of those given facts. It creates a mesh.
In fact, it’s so rare for me to go the other way that I needed some input from this community when I looked to consolidate some facts for my grand-uncle Frank.