How do I add notes to a person

RootsMagic
1

How do I add notes to a person. I want to add an obituary.

2

Edit Person window, directly to the right of the Death fact line, click the blank box directly beneath the column heading that has an icon that looks like a square sheet of paper with an upturned lower-right corner. The Edit Note screen will appear in the right-hand pane.

3

The note for the death fact is surely the most usual place to enter an obituary. But there can by other possibilities.

Some users create sort of a narrative for a person in the general person record (the Person line at the top of the Edit Person screen). Such a narrative could include the obituary. Other users create a special fact such as and Obituary fact and they enter the obituary into the note for the Obituary fact.

There is no one best solution that’s best for everybody. Try it several different ways and see what works best for you. The easiest way to start is with the note for the death fact.

4

I added a fact type Obituary. Abbrev Obit. That way I can see easily when I have got one. Then use its note field. From newspapers there is a date & place. Publication place can be interesting and point to places they lived/worked earlier.

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5

For me an obituary is just another source. I extract all the relevant facts and enter each of those facts as new facts for my individual with the obituary cited as the source. I add the full text or abstract of the obituary and an image of the obituary to the obituary source. I also add the obituary source to the general source for each person mentioned in the obituary to document family relationships. Many times there is other useful information in the obituary such as relationships between individuals, their places of residence, and whether these relatives predeceased the individual.

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6

Same here, with the newspaper as the source.

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7

I used to use notes for a variety of individual facts, but did not always like the way they read in reports. In recent times I tend to use the general note for the father of various families to write a reasonably coherent narrative that deals with the family’s issues.

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8

I’ve been using the fact notes to write a “proof summary” for each fact / event. It’s where I summarise, based on all the evidence (citations) collected for the particular event, whether the event is considered proven, likely, or possible. I will also sometimes enter disproven facts and then document the reasons in the fact note why I think these events may be discounted.

I then use the person note to write a mini biography of the person (as I don’t use the narrative reports and the sentence functionality).

I use the actual citation research note to write a transcript of the document being cited.

So in this instance, assuming the obituary came from a newspaper, I’d use the newspaper citation to support the death fact (and any other facts the obituary supports). A full transcript of the obituary is entered into the citation research notes (with a copy of the newspaper page where the obituary is found placed in the media). The death fact note, being used as a proof summary, would then allude to the obituary and comment how it supports or gives weight to the various death facts (ie, does it support the date of death, place of death, or both) and how it co-exists, or not, with other information gained from other sources. Information from the obituary would also form part of the mini biography placed in the person note.

It’s really interesting to hear how we all use the notes differently.

I’m reviewing how I’ve been employing the various notes across the system, as it is a bit of a drawn out process, and so it’d be great to hear other ideas too.