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FTAnalyzer questions.

Residence facts should, in my opinion, be individual's facts, not shared. Using FTM or ancestry when adding the census to an individual you are able to add the residence fact to all the individuals in your tree that are on that census. It may be that the spouse was not at home on the night of the census so was not recorded or was recorded elsewhere.

FTM 2010 always records the residence fact as an individual fact, even if (as in the case of my 2g-grandparents) there are twelve individuals in the same household. I prefer the couples to be listed as sharing one fact -- perhaps it's just my own personal oddity. May I ask why you think they should always be individual facts? (I like hearing why other people do things differently).
 
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May I ask why you think they should always be individual facts?

Because, as Norman says, a couple may not always be at the same address on census night. One may be working away from home or just visiting other friends/relatives, leaving their partner at home. I have many such instances in my tree(s).
 
I suppose it depends on whether you are recording where they lived on a particular date or where they were on that date. I don't think you can always assume that a couple were living where the census records them. They, and the family, may have been visiting friends or relatives on that date.
 
What happens when a relative appears on more than one relevant census? Do you add a second Lost Cousin Fact? I use "description" so I can record two or more censuses without FTM getting over-excited!

View attachment 861

I assume that since you do it by date, that's how it works with FTA?
Yes Lynne, I add 3 separate Lost Cousins facts if they happen to be on 1841, 1881 and 1911.

Yes, that's how FTA works.
 
It doesn't do that in FTM 2010 (unless I'm doing something wrong). It adds the residence fact to the individual's facts which I find frustrating since they are clearly living together! Here is an example of an ancestor for whom I haven't yet created a "residence shared" fact. You can see he's been married for two census, but both facts appear in the individual area.
View attachment 859

So I created "residence shared" so that it would be listed under the marriage fact. Here is the relative I am working on at the moment.
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Does this change with FTM 2014? Am I now setting myself up for trouble when I upgrade next month?
On the Marriage Fact you have the address Tilsbury, Wilshire, England. This address is shared with her partner. You could update this address and both places will change.

However, you seem to have created a Residence/Census shared fact. I don't do this. What I do is to update the address with what I find on the census and save that to each person on the census. Everyone on that census now has the same address. No new facts required.
 
FTM 2010 always records the residence fact as an individual fact, even if (as in the case of my 2g-grandparents) there are twelve individuals in the same household. I prefer the couples to be listed as sharing one fact -- perhaps it's just my own personal oddity. May I ask why you think they should always be individual facts? (I like hearing why other people do things differently).
It's true that an individual Fact is created, but they share the same source citation.

A shared Fact is for 2 people. What do you do when you have 12 children in the same house?
 
While I still have a relatively small number of entries in my LC facts, should I convert them to Census facts in order to use FTA efficiently?
A Lost Cousins Fact and a Census Fact are two different things. A Lost Cousins Fact indicates the person has been entered onto Lost Cousins with the specific year. A census fact indicates you have found them on a census for that year.

Thus converting Lost Cousins Facts to census facts would be the wrong thing to do.
 
I don't create Census facts; I create Residence facts. FTM 2010 automatically creates the facts as residence facts so I have followed that lead. Why would one use Census over Residence (or vice versa)?
You can use Residence facts or census facts interchangeably FTAnalyzer will cope with either provided the "Treat Residence facts as Census facts" option is ticked which it is by default.

The only reason to use a Census fact over a residence fact is that it is clearly there for specifically recording a census entry. I have multiple people in my tree for instance for whom I have a census fact and a different residence fact as they were only visiting on census night, their usual residence was elsewhere. So I've recorded their residence as their residence fact and where they were on the census as a census fact.
Also, I have created another shared fact called "Residence Shared" so that couple share the same address information under their marriage information. I have then deleted their individual facts.
Hmmm interesting. I've never seen that before and can say that this special custom fact will show up as unrecognised in FTAnalyzer. It won't be treated as either a census fact nor a residence fact. I would agree with Norman it doesn't make sense to be a shared fact as very frequently the couple won't be together. eg: spouse has died. So you'd end up with some instances being individual facts and some being shared which would render any reports of who was missing a residence useless as it would be cumbersome to craft a report that looked at the two conflicting fact types.

Shared facts are meant to be things that ALWAYS apply to both parties. eg: Marriage facts, divorce facts, banns facts etc.
In my custom Lost Cousin facts, I put description only (no date or place) and simply type the dates (1841, 1881, 1911) as appropriate. Is that the idea?
The Lost Cousins fact format needs no description at all. The only thing you need to add is the date (year is good enough) to the date field - NOT the description field. The description field should be blank, its a date and belongs in the date field. If you have someone who has multiple entries in different years on Lost Cousins then they should have multiple Lost Cousins facts, just with different dates.

Note the right hand column in FTM is only for showing preferred facts. Where you will clearly have multiple facts eg: Census/Residence, Occupation, etc you simply press F3 to edit person or right click and select edit person or click on the person tab. Once you have their form open you simply add an extra fact. Note it is not at all unusual for someone to have half a dozen census facts for instance. If you have found them on half a dozen census records they should. These can of course be residence facts if that's what you've been using in the past there is no necessity to change to using census facts.
 
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It doesn't do that in FTM 2010 (unless I'm doing something wrong). It adds the residence fact to the individual's facts which I find frustrating since they are clearly living together! Here is an example of an ancestor for whom I haven't yet created a "residence shared" fact. You can see he's been married for two census, but both facts appear in the individual area.
View attachment 859
This is EXACTLY as it should be. A residence fact doesn't always apply to both people in the marriage (g: one dies before the other, they are resident somewhere before they marry etc. More importantly a shared fact won't show up for any of the children so you are effectively missing out recording where the children were living at the point in their lives when they were children.
So I created "residence shared" so that it would be listed under the marriage fact. Here is the relative I am working on at the moment.
View attachment 860

Does this change with FTM 2014? Am I now setting myself up for trouble when I upgrade next month?
It is exactly the same in FTM 2014 as it is in FTM 2010 and I would EXTREMELY STRONGLY advise that you abandon the shared residence fact it makes reporting extremely difficult and will cause you problems in future. The GEDCOM standard identifies RESIdence facts as a individual fact type for a very good reason as residences can be common between two people but aren't always in common, thus aren't a shared fact.
 
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Lynne,

Here is an example from my tree note William Morrison was resident at 20 Loch Street, Aberdeen, Scotland when he married on 13th October 1876. However the marriage took place at 8 Canal Terrace, Aberdeen, Scotland. The marriage fact has the date and the place as standard parts of a marriage fact and displayed in the right hand panel of FTM 2010 (or FTM 2014). The residence fact is added to the individual to indicate where his usual residence was at the time of the marriage.
upload_2015-6-5_15-43-12.png
 
One question that hasn't been answered though: I have been converting my residence facts for married couples into a "residence shared" fact (I understand other members don't agree but it makes sense to me). I then delete the individual facts. Aside from whether anyone else does it this way, am I setting myself up for disaster when I upgrade to FTM 2014 next month? Or will FTM just 'play along' with this custom made fact?

FTM 2014 won't mind at all but it is a really really bad idea as you will destroy the ability to report on residence in FTM 2010 or FTM 2014 or FTAnalyzer. Residence facts are NOT shared facts and it doesn't make sense to circumvent the standards to try to make them shared facts. However I'd suggest you review this in the morning and ask if the standard that has been developed and in place for 20+ years has never had a shared residence fact is it at all wise to circumvent the standard?

Sorry if this is coming across too strong but I just cannot see how it helps and can only see very significant negatives.
 
Thank you, Alexander. I will go back to all my shared residence facts and re-convert them to individual facts. Your explanations are clear and simple. Because I have never used FTA and you designed it, that 's why I m asking the questions about what I should and shouldn't do. Also, in the same way as I know how to drive a car but not how the engine works, I know how to use FTM but not what goes on in the background. Thank you to Peter and the rest of the team for creating this forum and to all the members who so generously give of their time and experience to assist those of us who want to know!
 
I will go back to all my shared residence facts and re-convert them to individual facts.
I've re-written all my residence facts as individual facts and re-set all my Lost Cousin facts as dates.
Now I have another question -- can the residence dates be from one date to another? eg "between 1861-1881"
or will FTA only recognise the date in its 1881 format?
Sorry, but I want to get it right and not get frustrated because the program isn't doing what I have caused it not to do!
 
The residence facts reflect where the individual was on a particular night. I'm not sure that there is fact type that would allow you to enter a date range but I'm sure Alexander will know for sure. You could always create a fact to enter that information in addition to the census or residence fact.
 
Residence facts can absolutely have a range of dates without problem. If you are using them as census fates though you will get a warning that it covers more than one census which could be an error.

This is partly why there is a separate type of fact specifically for a census. A residence is by its definition a period of time someone lived somewhere. A census is a discreet event on a single night. Hence different fact types for different events. That said because of the way FTM and Ancestry completely botched and confuse the two types I specifically designed FTAnalyzer to cope with residence facts being erroneously used instead of census facts.
 
Residence facts can absolutely have a range of dates without problem. A residence is by its definition a period of time someone lived somewhere. A census is a discreet event on a single night.
That's exactly how I interpreted it too; after all, I have been in residence at my current address for twelve month, and at my previous one for twenty-two years and FTM reflects that.
Fortunately, most of my data that has a range of dates doesn't include the three relevant English census dates; however I'll be careful with those that are affected and find some way around it -- perhaps by creating a separate census fact just for that individual or group of individuals.
 
I just tried adding a residence date range to myself in ancestry. The timeline only shows the first of the dates. How do you enter a from and to date in a single date field? Ive tried dd mon yyyy - dd mon yyyy and dd mon yyyy to dd mon yyyy.
 
Hi Norman, I keep all my data in Family Tree Maker so I just added my childhood home to my Ancestry tree to try it out. I only used years and no space between the hyphen and the year eg. 1901-1902
Yes, the time line only took the first date but it did show that I lived there from age 4, which is true. What it didn't show was that I left home at 20 (to be married). Perhaps if I had added another residence fact, that would make sense.
 
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