This module allows you to add all the details from an original (currently only US, UK or France) census page to ALL the people listed on it (providing they already exist in your family tree) in ONE process. It includes tools to help find the relevant individuals, and presents the results in an easy to read, formatted, shared-note, containing all of the key facts from the original census page.
Here is an example of the completed display:
Important note: One thing this tool can not currently do is add new people to your family tree. So you do need to add everyone you will be recording from the census to your tree BEFORE you start using this.
Initial Steps
To add census data, start from any individual shown on the census page for the household, select Census (CENS) from the Add new fact drop-down at the bottom of the page, then click Add. (Ideally you would start with the ‘Head’ of the household, but it is not essential)
This will open a Census edit pop-up window
From here, the first steps are:
Very important: Only enter data here that can be common to all the individuals on the census page / household. So do not enter Age for a single individual otherwise later in the process that age will be copied to all the other individuals.
Next add a Source Citation for this event, by clicking on the Add a new Source Citation option and entering the appropriate details.
At this point there are two options for adding the Shared Note containing the census details:
Whichever you choose, Create a new Shared Note using Assistant opens the Census Assistant window, a large pop-up. It contains 6 areas of information, which are briefly described here. Detailed instructions for each area will follow below using these numbers as the key. You can see that much of the information already entered has been retained here, so no re-typing is required.
Area 1 – Header information
It is important to identify the correct person in this information. The name is used in the title of the shared note (area 2), and will, if not edited later, be identified as the Head of the household on the individual details later (area 4). If you need to change this person, select someone else from the list in area 3, and click on the small “head” icon beside their name. The screen will refresh, with that new person shown in area 1.
Area 2 – Summary information
This is where you can enter information related to the whole census page.
The items “Country” and “Year” are mandatory, but will generally be filled in automatically from the entries you made on the previous window. They can be changed here though if you want to. You must select the country of the census (currently only UK, USA, or France are available as templated choices), and the year of the census before any other data can be entered. These are also added in front of the text in the Titlebox to create the title of the shared note. The Title text can be manually edited here if you want.
The fields, Reference, Locality, and Notes are also optional, and are simple text entry fields. You can add any appropriate text of your own or from the original census pages here, or leave blank if you prefer.
At this point you can click on Preview in area 6 to see how the inputs made so far will appear in the GEDCOM NOTE record, displayed in area 5.
Area 3 – Person List and Search
This area is based on the Family Navigator pane shown on Individual pages of kiwitrees. It lists close relatives of the person set as Head here (marked with a tick). It is designed to include those people most likely to be needed for this census record. To change the person designated as “Head”, simply click on a different head icon.
Its use is very simple. Following the order of people listed on the original census page, click on each name in turn. As each name is clicked, their details will be transferred to the Data Input area 4, including any pieces of information that can be deduced automatically at this time.
Once all the required people have been added to area 4, the whole window will look like the example below.
Area 4 – Census Data Input
[Note: on your screen you will see scroll bars, needed to view the full width or height of this area. This is necessary to accommodate large numbers of columns found in census pages in some years, and for large households, while still fitting a pop-up window on most screen sizes.]
The next steps are to:
Other things to know about this area:
Finishing
When all the data in area 4 is as correct as you want it to be, click on Preview in area 6 for a final review of the output, which will look like this:
If all is well:
Unless you have auto approve changes set to Yes in your user account, you will now need to accept (approve) each of these changes. Once that is complete, ALL of the individuals added to area “4” will now have a CENS event much like the one shown at the start of this article.
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