rjdalton writes...

If the only census information for a person in a given year is their country of birth, Gensmarts should recognize that the person wasn't actually listed on the census that year -- that the info merely came from a child on the census that year.

I input country of origin for a parent into FTM, for say, 1900 for someone in New York. The parent wasn't on the census, just the child.

Now GenSmarts is saying I should search for cemetery records for this person in NY soon after that date, saying the person was in the census in in NY in 1900. But they weren't there. It was their child who was there at the time.

In other words, Gensmarts should ignore country of origin data for census records.

On 2007-12-04 1:29pm GenSmarts replied...

Offhand, I don't think this would improve suggestions for most people, though I'm not sure I completely understand from your description what facts you have recorded in your example for the parent and the child. If a minor child is recorded as found on census, GenSmarts will consider that census location as a possible location for the parent. That seems a reasonable possibility to pursue, though as with any estimate/assumption/hypothesis it won't always turn out to be the case.

On 2007-12-04 10:44pm rjdalton added...

OK. That's fine as you explain it. It's a reasonable assumption that the parent might be buried where a child was living.

But how about this...

Say I find Joe Smith Jr. in the 1930 census in New York City. It lists his parents as being from Ireland, so I enter that birth data (no year -- just the place), sourced to the 1930 census.

Does Gensmarts' logic then assume I've found the 1930 Census record of Joe Smith Sr., when in fact, I've only found the 1930 census for his son?

The suggestion I received seemed to imply that Gensmarts thought Joe Smith Sr. was in NY. It suggested I search around 1930-something for Joe Smith Sr.'s cemetery records because the census showed that he was living in NYC in 1930. Well, he wasn't there. His son was.

quote:Originally posted by GSAdmin

Offhand, I don't think this would improve suggestions for most people, though I'm not sure I completely understand from your description what facts you have recorded in your example for the parent and the child. If a minor child is recorded as found on census, GenSmarts will consider that census location as a possible location for the parent. That seems a reasonable possibility to pursue, though as with any estimate/assumption/hypothesis it won't always turn out to be the case.

On 2007-12-05 12:21am GenSmarts replied...

Oh, your example is different than what I was thinking. What your describing is what I'd call "source assertion", a feature that asserts the presence of a census source equates to a census fact. You can shut that off in TOOLS...SETTINGS...Analysis tab... the "assert events via sources" checkbox... if you think it doesn't work well with your style of documenting facts/sources. We put it on by default because we got so many requests for it from people who don't document census events/facts anywhere other than sources.

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