In the February meeting of the San Diego Genealogical Society RootsMagic User Group, one of my colleagues asked about how to add a Fact and share that Fact with any number of persons.
My response was "I don't do that" - I add the Fact to the head of household, write a Fact Note that summarizes the record, craft a source citation, add the Media image, and then copy that Fact, the note, the source and the media item to each person in the record.
For instance for a Census record, I create the Fact for N persons in the record (by clicking on each person and ADDing a Fact, filling in the date, place, detail, etc.), then copying the note, source and media to each of the N persons.
One of the other attendees said "well, there's a 'Family Census' Fact type. How does that work?" I responded that it automatically adds the Fact to all of the person profiles for the spouse and all of the children, even though not every family member might be in the census record.
Another attendee pointed out that there is a "Share" button on every Fact - it's over on the right side of the Edit Person screen under "Source." I had to admit I had never used that "Share" button after, what, eight years of using RootsMagic?
Today, I had some to time to explore this feature.
1) I went to the "Help" button in RootsMagic, and the "Search" field, and entered "share a fact" to see what RootsMagic said about it:
The Help section said there are three steps to sharing a Fact:
* Add roles and role sentences to the Fact type.
* Add the people to the shared Fact.
* Add the "shared" people into the Fact sentence for the Principal.
Then there is an example of the process, starting with "Add a person to share the Fact."
Hmmm, sounds hard.
2) I wanted to start, so I went to one of my ancestors - my great-grandfather Frank Walton Seaver. Here is his "Edit Person" screen with the 1900 U.S. Census highlighted:
Do you see the "Share" button on the right-hand side, below the "Source" button? That's how you Share a Fact.
I want to share this Fact with the other four persons on the specific census record for this family - his wife, two sons, and his mother-in-law.
3) I clicked on the "Share" button and saw a screen for "People who share this fact."
There are four main buttons on the screen - "Add a person," "Add multiple people," "Edit" and "Remove person."
On the screen above, the options for "Add a person" are "Choose person from database" and "Just type name of person."
4) I chose to "Choose a person from database" and clicked that, whicho pened the "Edit shared event" screen:
I clicked the "Select" button and selected the wife, Hattie Louisa Hildreth, from the person list. When I came back, the box for "This person is in my file" was checked. The "Role" dropdown menu let me choose previously defined Roles or to create a new Role. I clicked on "Add new role type" and saw:
I created a "Wife" role type in the "Edit Role Type" screen, and then had no clue what to put in the "Sentence template for this role" text box.
5) I clicked "OK" two times to get out of the screens, repeated the process for the two sons and them other-in-law, and I was back to the "People who share this fact:"
All four of the persons now share the Fact and have a defined role.
6) I clicked "OK" twice and was back to the Family view, and clicked on Hattie Louisa Hildreth's name, and saw her "Edit Person" screen:
On her screen, the 1900 U.S. Census Fact has an icon on the left that indicates the Fact is shared, and appears to have a Note, Source and Media item checked on the lists to the right of the Fact. There are entries in the "Census Details" for "Note," "Source" and "Share" buttons. I checked and these match the information on Frank Walton Seaver's profile and the profiles of the other three persons.
What isn't there is the Sentence for the Fact and the assigned role.
7) I need to work on the Role Sentences, because it's something I'm not experienced in. I think I want a Fact sentence that says something like:
"[Person] was enumerated in the census on [Date] in the household of [Principal] as the [Role], residing at [Detail] in [Place]."
where RootsMagic should be able to automagically add the name of the Person, the event date, the name of the principal, the place detail and the place.
If there are other researchers and RootsMagic users who have done Role Sentences, I would appreciate knowing what you would do for a census record like this.
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Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver
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