Hi. I am struggling with the “witnesses” feature. I have entered a few now, some linked to others in my database (eg brother witness to wedding) , and also name just typed (eg registrar). I cannot find a way to search for events that were witnessed, as the advanced search option just seems to list those in my database who were a witness in some role. Also I cannot find the “just type a name” entries at all. This would be so helpful so I could find people who witnessed a few events over time and tie people together. At the moment the only thing I can get anything close to what I want seems so be to put witnesses, including registrar names, friends, etc into either description or notes fields and then at least “find everywhere” will find them. Am I doing something wrong? I am trying to avoid entering lots of redundant info into the Share Fact bit that serves no purpose if I might as well just use description or notes. Thanks.
The ability to do searching on witnesses has long been completely missing in RM, and was only added in RM 11.0.3. I hadn’t experimented with the new feature yet, and your message inspired me to do a little testing.
I can replicate your results and concur with your conclusions. The new tool just finds people who are witnesses, without regard to the name of the role. And since Advanced Search is creating a list of people, it can’t show the “just type a name” entries at all.
Nobody but the RM developers knows what additional enhancements are planned for searching or reporting on shared events. But for years, I have made very limited use of shared events, and for two reasons. One reason is that they are not supported by software such as FamilySearch and Ancestry and so they are lost if I transfer my data from RM to either system. The other reason is that they are virtually impossible to manage, such as no ability to report on them or search for them. The new support in RM 11.0.3 is a huge step in the right direction, but it is not everything that is needed.
My very limited use of RM’s shared facts is just for the purpose of enhancing printed reports such as I take to family reunions. I use them in such a way that no data is acutally lost if the shared facts are lost. So it’s almost like I’m not using them.
99% of my shared facts are for Census – they work for my needs (despite “software such as FamilySearch and Ancestry and so they are lost if I transfer my data from RM to either system” mentioned by Jerry.) Most other software does except them that I use.
I suspect the find every is not finding them because of the database tables do not have a relationship setup to fine the roles. So adding “role” would be an welcomed enhancement for many users.
Thank you @thejerrybryan and @kevync1985 for taking the time to reply, and that it helpful in that I am not doing something wrong. It can’t be done.
After posting I came up with a kind of solution for one of the shortcomings. I found that if I enter an unlinked person, say the name of a registrar, and then add them in Share Fact as that role, then if I find them in the list of people (clearly marked with the use of a suffix to denote they are not family) and edit them, I get a really nice list of all the facts they were registrars for, the name and number for the index person, the event and date! It’s a bit “heath robinson” I know, but it works quite nicely. I’m aware this will not transfer out well (if at all) but the data is not lost as I transcribe all sources word for word in the research notes of the source so the witnesses, etc are never lost (and find everywhere does find them there but the results are messy to work with. It doesn’t help, however it does not help with finding witnessed events, listing them and viewing all witnesses in whatever role - that’s still a problem.
That’s surely the most common use of shared facts, and I don’t disagree with that approach per se. You could even argue that Census is the primary impetus for even having shared facts. Sharing Census does work well for many RM users.
I copy census rather than sharing census. It’s a bit more work that sharing census, but only a bit more. The most time consuming aspect of entering census for me is that I like the fact Census note to be different for each family member. The extra time to do so is the about the same whether you share or copy Census. In fact, the first reason I decided not to share census was not because shared facts would not transfer out of RM in all cases. It was because it didn’t save any time because I had to customize each the Census note for each family member anyway.
One of my actual uses of shared facts is to share Marriage facts and Divorce facts with both parties to the Marriage or Divorce. That sounds ridiculous on its face because Marriage and Divorce facts are couple facts that already belong to both partners. But Marriage and Divorce facts do not show up in the list of individual facts for either partner in narrative reports. Rather, they show up in a separate list of facts for the couple. By sharing the Marriage and Divorce facts as I do, I get them to show up in the list of facts for each individual in narrative reports.
My other use for shared facts is that I introduced a Parents fact into my database. Originally, I had not planned to share it at all. I introduced it to provide a place to attach a citation for evidence of a person’s parents. In my view, neither RM nor genealogy data models writ large provide a good place to attach such a citation. If you look at RM’s Edit Person screen, it looks like the Parents line is such a place. The Parents line that is already there is not a fact. It’s more of a concept. And any citations you attach to that line belong to the parents as a couple and not to the child. I wanted a fact which belonged to the child to show who their parents were so that I could attach the citation.
I’m going to belabor the point a bit. My favorite example is that my grandfather Emmert Bryan had younger sisters Edna Bryan who was born in 1908 and Willie Bryan who was born in 1910. I found early Tennessee birth certificates for both sisters. I entered a citation for Edna’s birth certificate on the Parents line in her Edit Person screen. I then went to Willie’s Edit person screen to enter a citation for her birth certificate. Guess what, the Parents line for Willie already had a citation, and it was the citation for Edna’s birth certificate. That’s because the citation for Edna’s birth certificate did not belong to Edna. The citation for Edna’s birth certificate belonged to Edna’s parents, who obviously were the same as Willie’s parents. This is madness. So I added a Parents fact that belongs to the child so I can attach evidence of the child’s parents to the child rather than to the parents. That way (and using my example), evidence for Edna’s parents would belong to Edna, evidence for Willie’s parents would belong to Willie, and each other’s birth certificates would not show up on each other’s Edit Person screens.
I would repeat that the fault does not really lie with RM. The fault lies with the lineage linked data model that is used by all of genealogy. In any case, my Parents fact solved my problem. I listed the parents in the Description field of the Parents fact and attached citations for the child’s parents to the Parents fact. Sometime later, I realized that by sharing the Parent fact with each of the parents, it would improve the quality of my printed reports. So I did so, and even if I transfer my data to software that doesn’t understand shared facts, my Parents fact and the data it represents is still there.
I love this idea for the exact reasons you mentioned. I just created my new Parents fact. Let the cleanup begin. Did you also create a Parent (singular) fact for when only one has been identified?
No. If there is only one parent known then I enter only the one parent into the Description field of the Parents fact, and I share the Parents fact only with the one Parent.
And actually, even when I share with both parents I do it as two separate share operations – father first and then mother. For reasons of pedantic consistency, I like the father always to print first in reports, then the mother. If I share with both at the same time, I can’t control which share is listed first. The same issue happens if you use share facts with census. If you share with all the family members at the same time, you can’t control the order in which the shares appear in reports.
Jerry - I am interested in how you created this parent fact, as I have run into this situation as you described. I do add a source citation to each parent and add a note that they are listed on the child’s birth/marriage/death certificate. But I don’t this this is what you mean. (do you need my email, or can you reply here?) Thanks.
There have been two versions of my Parents fact.
Version 1. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I created it as follows. I use point form sentences, so it’s a very terse sentence. You could make your sentence be anything you want. I put the parents names as text in the Description field and I include the [Desc] variable in the sentence template. I give the Parents fact the same date as the Birth fact. I add a -1 suffix to the sort date for the Birth fact and a -2 suffix to the sort date for the Parents fact so that Birth and Parents are the first two facts. I attach a citation to the Parents fact which provides evidence of parentage.Being an attachment point for a citation to evidence for parentage was my primary motivation for adding th Parents fact. In my view, RM really doesn’t provide such an attachment point. A typical sentence would read something like the following in my narrative reports.
Parents: John Doe and Mary Smith.
Version 2. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I kept the same basic scheme except that I added a shared role. I use the shared role in the sentence template, but I still enter the name of the parents in the Description sentence in case my data gets transferred to software that doesn’t supported shared facts. The sentence looks exactly the same in my narrative reports. The difference is that as a shared role, the name of the parents shows up in the Name Index for my narrative reports. The Description field is just text and doesn’t show in the Name Index ini my narrative reports. The name of my shared role is Parent_of_Child. But the name of the shared role doesn’t really matter because what matters is what is in the sentence template.
Parents: John Doe and Mary Smith.
I included one more little tweak with my version 2. Namely, I gave the role itself a sentence. A little discussed feature of RM’s roles is that one role can be reflected in two different sentences. For example, suppose you had MidWife as a role for the Birth fact. You could have it set up so that it would say: Jane Doe was born 12 Jan 1866. The midwife who attended the birth as Sarah Smith. Then for Sarah Smith’s own narrative, it could say something like Sarah served as the midwife at the birth of Jane Doe on 12 Jan 1866.
So given that that capability exists, I created the following sentence for the Parent_of_Child role. It means that the births of each of their children show up as life events in narrative reports for the parents.
And of course to make all this work with shared role, you do actually have to share the Parents fact via the Parent_of_Child role. It doesn’t share itself. It can be a lot of work, but it can make for very nice narrative reports. You don’t have to do all of it. You could just do Version 1. Or could do version 2 with a sentence for the Parents fact but not for the role. Or you could do the whole thing.
You may see a sample report with all this in action at Sample RM Narrative Report with Narrative Fact and other Point Form Sentences
Thanks for this information.