Creating a successful sentence for new fact type "Widowed"

RootsMagic
1

I have written a new fact type for Widowed:

[person] was widowed <[date]> < when [spouse] died>.

But, if listed as an individual type it does not pick up the spouse’s name.

If listed as a family type, it works correctly for the widowed person BUT it also appears for the deceased person with the widow named as deceased - all wrong.

Any ideas how to stop the reverse listing on the deceased spouse?

Otherwise I will settle for the personal event as:

[person] was widowed <[date]> < age [person:Age:Plain]> < after [desc] of marriage>.

I think there is no way round me calculating the length of marriage (x years) and putting it in the description field.

2

If you are willing to use RM’s Shared facts, the best way to solve this problem would probably be to add a Widowed role to the Death fact and share that role with the spouse. The Death fact is an individual fact and therefore wouldn’t run into the problems associated with family type facts.

The sentence for the Widowed role might be something like the following.

[ThisPerson:Poss] spouse [Person] died [Date].

So if the Death fact was for John Doe and his wife was Jane Smith, that might give you something like the following in a report for Jane Smith.

Jane Smith’s spouse John Doe died on 12 Jun 1943

or

Her spouse John Doe died on 12 Jun 1943.

You could play with gender switches to display the appropriate “husband” or “wife” label instead of “spouse”. Another option would be to have two different roles, one role for husbands and one role for wives.

3

I knew @thejerrybryan would find something clever! Tx.

But, yes, I am not keen on shared facts that might not transfer.

4

Without shared facts, you could go back to your original sentence for an individual fact and change it to something like the following.

[person] was widowed <[date]> < when [Desc] died>.

You would need to enter the spouse’s name into the Description field. It would give you the sentence you want.

There is no way in RM to for a fact to actually reference two people except by using a family fact or by using a shared fact.