I am using RM10 (Windows) and I’m confused about the long-term “big picture” regarding Associations.
Do we have a consensus or accepted “best practice” regarding Associations and shared facts with witnesses. Specifically, should I be converting various Witnesses to Associations? Are Associations the way of the future?
Over the years, I’ve developed several specialized fact types, most with witnesses. For example, I have fact types for initial destination upon immigration, naturalization petition witnesses, people lodging with relatives and others. The primary goal is to be able to identify connections between people quickly. This information can also be expressed using specialized Associations, which have the benefit of some built-in functionality and, eventually, inclusion in GEDCOM and software exports and imports.
However, some of my specialized witness sentences lend themselves better than others to conversion to the Association format, and I’m hoping to get some direction before investing a lot of time into misguided or counterproductive changes to the database.
The choices have been getting more complex. Right now, I have three different types of links between people through DNA testing: “DNA Match” using Associates; “DNA test” with witnesses using the built-in facts and my own “DNA test with match” fact that gives additional citation details. It seems to me that to future-proof the database or to assure the most efficient way of sharing data, the Associates function is the way to go. Or am I wrong?
While it would be lovely to have everything in one piece of software, I have used a different piece of (ancient!) software since the turn of the century - Bygones. A simple database that allows you to enter document details (B, M, Ds, wills, etc) and gives the ability to search on names that wouldn’t normally appear in the main database. Names of marriage witnesses, death informants, will beneficiaries and probate grants to name a few. I personally wouldn’t want to add all those (often unknown and unlinked) individuals to my main database but find the ability to search on them, particularly when they appear regularly, really useful.
I haven’t thought about Bygones in years. I make my transcriptions that include names on documents in the source citations research notes, or tasks. Find Everywhere helps me locate where I have seen that name before even if the person isn’t in my database. I have a parent fact that I use when I don’t want to carry on a person’s line. Later if I find I am related to them I will use Find Everywhere to locate which individuals need linking.
@mamnys Like Renee, I would use the DNA Match Feature in most case—You didn’t say if you tree shared to Ancestry-- the new DNA Match Feature will NOT tree share to Ancestry— Shared facts also do NOT show up on Ancestry for the person(s) you shared it with-- just the original person-- any other DNA fact can show up and therefore you have to be very careful of the info included in the fact such as cM shared etc as that will also show on Ancestry.
There are however some cases I would consider using Associations with DNA-- 2 examples-- the first is that my sister and my g-niece have a shared match to a specific person BUT my nephew ( the g-niece’s father) does NOT have a shared match with that person.
2nd example would be DNA Matches for a guy who has a known half-niece ( he only has 1 sibling) and DNA shows he has an UNKNOWN half-niece ( has to be thru his unknown father)–all of them descend from a common ancestor Linda–there is another DNA match that descends from the common ancestor Linda BUT only the friend and one of the half-nieces share matches with this person–so using Associations on this particular match and the 3 pages of shared/not shared matches between the 2 half-nieces MIGHT help…
As for a consensus or accepted “best practice” regarding Associations and shared facts— basically there is none–it is what ever you want to do-- Associations is really new–in RM 9, you could build your associations BUT they were stuck in that database–you couldn’t tree share them to Ancestry-- they were NOT included in a gedcom and would NOT transfer in a drop n drag–so I doubt very many people did very much with them–RM 10 is just slightly better in that when you converted a RM 9 database, the Associations were preserved and if you do a drop n drag in RM 10, the Associations will transfer…
Shared facts will transfer in a gedcom and a drop n drag BUT if you have a customized fact, you MIGHT have to fix the sentence and then the info will show up in the database BUT they don’t transfer to Ancestry…
As a rule I don’t want to research lines not related to me. If I find the parents of a relative’s spouse I don’t want them added to my database. I created a custom fact type called Parents with the description field enabled. I will add that fact to the spouse and enter the father and mother’s name. I can source it and add notes if wanted. I just don’t have to have the parents as individuals in my database. They are still searchable.
I added a tree to Ancestry.com to find and be found by other researchers, but it is only periodically updated. Tree sharing with Ancestry is not a priority. Thanks for the response and the examples.
