Monday, November 7, 2011

Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 19: Creating U.S. Census Source Citations

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See all posts in this series at Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 Compendium.

One of my major criteria for selecting a "preferred" genealogy management program is the ease in creating source citations. I want to demonstrate the source citation creation process in Family Tree Maker 2012 in a number of posts for several different types of records, both for my own education and, hopefully, to help others navigate this fairly complex process.

One of the most cited types of historical record sources for American researchers is the United States Federal Census.  Family Tree Maker has two basic types of U.S. census source templates - those created by "Census Year and Location," or those created by "Census Year."  We will look at both options in this post.  For this post, I'm going to create a source citation for the 1900 U.S. Census record for my great-grandfather, Frank W. Seaver (1852-1922) residing in Leominster, Worcester County, Massachusetts.

Here is Frank's "Person" screen in the "People" workspace in FTM 2012, and I clicked on the Add ("+") button on the right side of the "Individual and Shared Facts" panel to Add a Census Fact, and scrolled down to the Census Fact:


I clicked on "Census" and the program added a "Census" Fact to the Fact list, and I entered the date and location for the Fact in the right-hand panel (with the person's name):


The program filled those items into the Fact as I typed them.  In the screen above, I wanted to add a Source citation for this Fact, so I clicked on the down arrow next to the "New" button in the "Source" tab, and the dropdown menu gave me the choice of  "Add New Source Citation" or "Use Existing Source Citation."  If I had already created a 1900 U.S. Census source citation, I could click on the "Use" item and try to find it in a list of master source citations.  I decided to select "Add New Source Citation" so I could demonstrate how to do it the first time.

Now we'll do it two different ways:

1)  By "Census Year and Location"

From the screen above, after I click on the "Add New Source Citation," the "Add Source Citation for Census for ..." screen opens, and on the screen I click on the "New" button, and the "Add Source" screen opens and I click the "More" button, and see a list of master template groups:


The choice of a template group is obvious in this case, I'm going to choose the "Census Records" group.  I then choose a "Category" item of "Digital Images" and the Template "Population Schedule - United States, 1880-1930 (by Census Year and Location)."  Those are shown in the screen above.

I click on the "OK" button, and see the "Add Source" screen with the Source Template for "Population Schedule - United States, 1880-1930 (by Census Year and Location)."  The template fields are (with my entries):

*  Census Year:  1900
*  State:  Massachusetts
*  County:  Worcester
*  Publication Number: T623 [note - this is the NARA microfilm publication number]
*  Film Roll Number:  692 [note: this is the NARA roll number for this microfilm publication with the specific census entry]
*  Website title:  Ancestry.com
*  Database publisher:  Ancestry.com
*  Publisher location:  Provo, Utah, USA
*  Database year:  2002 [note: this is the year the database became available]
*  URL:  http://www.ancestry.com
*  comments:  [left blank]

Here is the "Add Source" template filled in with the above information:



I clicked the "OK" button and then added information to the "Add Source Citation for Census of ..." screen, including:

*  Citation detail:  Leominster, Enumeration District 1645, Sheet 16-A, Page 264 (stamped), Dwelling 258, Family 371,  Frank W. Seaver household

The resulting Source Citation screen is:


When I click on the "Reference Note" tab on the screen above, I can see the created source citation for this specific Fact:


The Reference Note created by FTM 2012 is:

1900 U.S. census, population schedule, Worcester, Massachusetts, Leominster, Enumeration District 1645, Sheet 16-A, Page 264 (stamped), Dwelling 258, Family 371, Frank W. Seaver household; NARA microfilm publication T623, roll 692; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).

A Full Reference Note crafted using Evidence! Explained (page 240), or the QuickSheet: Citing Ancestry.com Databases and Images, for Census Images in online databases, this entry would be:

1900 U.S. census, Worcester County, Massachusetts, population schedule,, Leominster, Enumeration district (ED) 1645, sheet 16-A, p. 264 (stamped), dwelling 258, family 371, Frank W. Seaver; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 21 April 2009), citing National Archives microfilm publication T623, roll 692.

As you can see, there is a significant difference in the order of the elements of the source citation.  The way I entered the citation details differed slightly from the EE model also. 

Note that a researcher would have to create a unique source citation for each Census Roll in a specific Census Year.  If a researcher had persons on 20 different microfilm rolls in the 1900 census, s/he would have to create 20 different master sources to accommodate each microfilm roll.

2)  By "Census Year"

The second way to enter Census source citations is to choose this "Census" "Digital images" "Template" from the dropdown menu in the third screen above, or by entering a Keyword into the "Source template" field in the "Add source" screen instead of clicking on "More"

In the "Add Source" screen, I entered the Keyword "cen" (you need at least three letters) into the "Source template" field and the list of the different templates appeared.  I picked "Population Schedules - United States, 1880-1930 (by Census Year)" on the list shown below:


 I clicked on "OK" and the "Add Source" screen with the "Population Schedules - United States, 1880-1930 (by Census Year)" template appeared.  The fields for this template, and my entries included:

 *  Census year:  1900
*  Publication number:  T623
*  Website title:  Ancestry.com
*  Database publisher:  Ancestry.com
*  Publisher location:  Provo, Utah, USA
*  Database year: 2002
*  URL: http://www.ancestry.com
*  comments: [left blank]

The "Add Source" template looked like this:


I clicked on "OK" and then entered data into the fields of the "Add Source citation..." screen:

*  Citation details:  Roll 692, Worcester County, Massachusetts, Leominster, Enumeration District (ED) 1645, sheet 16-A, Page 264, dwelling 258, family 371, Frank W. Seaver household

*  Citation text:  In the 1900 U.S. Census, the Frank Seaver family resided at 149 Lancaster Street in Leominster, Worcester County, Massachusetts.  The Seaver family was renting the house. The family included:
*   Frank W. Seaver -- head of household, white, male, born June 1852, age 47, married 26 years, born MA, parents born MA, a teamster, rents home
*   Hattie L. Seaver -- wife, white, female, born Nov 1856, age 43, married 26 years, mother of 3 children, 2 living, born MA, father born MA, mother born VT
*  Fred W. Seaver -- son, white, male, born February 1876, age 24, single, born MA, parents born MA, a painter of combs
*  Harry C. Seaver -- son, white, male, born March 1885, age 15, single, born MA, parents born MA, a painter of combs
*  Sophia Hildreth -- mother-in-law, white, female, born September 1835, age 64, widow, mother of 1 child, 1 living,  born MA, father born ME, mother born MA


The "Add Source Citation" screen looked like this:


For this source citation, with the citation text included, I left the box for "Include citation text in reference note" checked.  If I didn't want the citation text included, I can uncheck the box.

The Reference Note tab for this source citation is shown below



The Reference Note for this specific source citation is:

1900 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T623, Roll 692, Worcester County, Massachusetts, Leominster, Enumeration District (ED) 1645, sheet 16-A, Page 264 (stamped), dwelling 258, family 371, Frank W. Seaver household. In the 1900 U.S. Census, the Frank Seaver family resided at 149 Lancaster Street in Leominster, Worcester County, Massachusetts. The Seaver family was renting the house. The family included:
* Frank W. Seaver -- head of household, white, male, born June 1852, age 47, married 26 years, born MA, parents born MA, a teamster, rents home
* Hattie L. Seaver -- wife, white, female, born Nov 1856, age 43, married 26 years, mother of 3 children, 2 living, born MA, father born MA, mother born VT
* Fred W. Seaver -- son, white, male, born February 1876, age 24, single, born MA, parents born MA, a painter of combs
* Harry C. Seaver -- son, white, male, born March 1885, age 15, single, born MA, parents born MA, a painter of combs
* Sophia Hildreth -- mother-in-law, white, female, born September 1835, age 64, widow, mother of 1 child, 1 living, born MA, father born ME, mother born MA; digital image, Ancestry.com
(http://www.ancestry.com).

Without the citation text included, the Reference Note is:

1900 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T623, Roll 692, Worcester County, Massachusetts, Leominster, Enumeration District (ED) 1645, sheet 16-A, Page 264 (stamped), dwelling 258, family 371, Frank W. Seaver household; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).

For comparison purposes, here is the source citation for this Fact crafted from Evidence! Explained (page 240):

1900 U.S. census, Worcester County, Massachusetts, population schedule,, Leominster, Enumeration district (ED) 1645, sheet 16-A, p. 264 (stamped), dwelling 258, family 371, Frank W. Seaver; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 21 April 2009), citing National Archives microfilm publication T623, roll 692.

As you can see, the elements of the source citation are significantly different, although all of the elements are included.  Note that I put the Roll number as the first item in the citation detail just so it would follow the NARA microfilm number.  With this type of source template, the user has to include the county and state in the Citation Detail, along with the other detail items.

In addition, when the citation text is included in the source citation (as shown in the last screen above), it follows the citation detail, and the rest of the source is added after the citation text. 

It is clear to me that Family Tree Maker 2012 does not follow the letter of the Evidence! Explained templates, although all of the template elements are included. 

I really prefer the "(by Census Year)" as a Master Source because I can create only one Master Source for each year.  I really don't like the way the Citation Text information "runs on" in the middle of the source citation.

This has been a longer post than I anticipated due to the complexity of the source citation creation process, and the two different choices for source templates for a specific year. 

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whilst I like all of this info on generating reports, I still don't know how to generate a report of unsourced/documented facts :-(

Surely someone out there knows how............

Regards, Helen D

Posted on behalf of Helen by Larry Czarnik
2011NV08 09:00 Sydney, NV07 17:00 US EST

bgwiehle said...

In your screen shots, it seems that not all available census years are included as census facts. Do you only enter census facts only for adults or only for the head of household? How do you document enumeration for other household members or persons not living with a relative? What about those missing from the expected household?

Pamela Wile said...

Helen, it seems that the unsourced facts report disappeared a few versions ago. Why? Who knows? I was really disappointed that it wasn't included in FTM2009 and apparently it's not in FTM2012.

Anonymous said...

Randy, my first guess would have been the "Online Commercial Site - Generic (Census, Digital Image by Year and Location)" template. I tried it but it too differs from EE. I commented late on some of your earlier FTM citation posts, but I'm about convinced that the only practical approach is to use a program's Free Form source "template" (or really non-template). I've wasted so much time trying to get templates to work right (compared to EE), including experimenting the way that you have been. Unfortunately, FTM doesn't have a true Free Form option. It does have a "Basic" template but it is limiting as well.

Jeff

Sue Adams said...

If Ancestry say the template follows EE then it should do so to the letter -no excuses. It would be a good thing if they also recognised that, influential as EE is, it is not the only way to cite a source. The facility to build your own custom format should be included.

Unknown said...

I really appreciate this and the other article son Family Tree Maker and citing sources, as I am doing this myself now. On the comments about the unsourced facts report being removed. I'm not sure I understand. I am using FTM 2012 build 21.0.0.723 and under publish source_reports, I find a report called "undocumented facts". Is that not what you're looking for?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this post. I agree wit Sue Adams, that if Ancestry says they are following EE they should follow EE.
Anyone had any success with a work around?

Shelley