Local family register

Introduction

Extras

Multi-part local family books

An exemplary use case for multi-part local family registers is the recording of persons who died in a local military hospital, e.g., soldiers, who are not related to the inhabitants of the town being surveyed. The actual inhabitants and those who died in the hospital are then kept in two separate lists, which form the basis for the family sections in the local family register.

Additional registers

One example of an additional use case for registers is emigrant lists. For this, you maintain a separate register of persons titled "Emigrants" and select this register for an additional register, which is then displayed under the heading "Emigrants" in the registers of persons in the local family register.

Selection of the lists of persons

In the left-hand list of person directories, select a directory by clicking on it and then add the selected directory to the selection using the → button. Similarly, you can deselect a selected directory in the right-hand list by clicking on it and using the ← button.

The order in the local family register corresponds to the selected order in the right-hand list.

Selection of families

Introduction

The user controls which individuals in the underlying directory are eligible to form a family block through the concept of signatures and matching signature schemes ( see Tips ). A signature can be entered for each individual. If this signature conforms to a predefined signature scheme (see Omega settings under Omega | Reports | General | Include signatures ), the necessary condition for the individual to form a family block is met. The rules for determining whether a person's signature conforms to the signature scheme are described in the subsection " Control via Signatures" .

Beyond the matching signature, there are additional sufficient conditions that depend on the family constellation of the person with the matching signature. These sufficient conditions are described in the section Selection Rules .

Control via signatures

The signature scheme is set in the Omega settings under Evaluations | Evaluation Forms | Local Family Register | Include Signatures . A signature scheme is a pattern for signatures. The signature scheme N* , for example, represents the letter N followed by any remainder. Index cards whose signature begins with N will match this pattern, but not those whose signature is empty or begins with a different character.

The signature scheme allows the use of wildcard characters, which stand for a group of characters:

The OR operator of signature schemes is a signature scheme that corresponds to a signature that matches at least one of the two signature schemes linked by a vertical bar ( | , ASCII code 124, usually present on German keyboards). For example, both signature A and signature N correspond to the signature scheme A|N (read: A or N ).

The following are some examples of signature schemes:

Please note that the signature scheme set under Evaluations | Evaluation Types | Local Family Register | Exclude Signatures does not exclude individuals with matching signatures, but merely displays these individuals with reduced information. This is useful if a previous local family register was already created from the card index using this signature scheme, and the current local family register, for space reasons, should only mention the individuals already described in detail in the earlier register.

Signatures can be a maximum of 10 characters long, signature schemes can be of any length.

Selection rules

The underlying list of persons is checked person by person in the order specified by the sorting.

Algorithm: predefined

Algorithm: dynamic

1. Male persons
   1. Person has at least one marriage, or
   2. Person has at least one child, or
   3. The person has no parents or their parents are unsuitable.
   Rule 1c ensures that individuals without any connection to other people also appear in the local family register.
2. Female persons
   1. The person has at least one child whose father is not recorded, or
   2. Person has no parents or their parents are unsuitable
   Rule 2b does not apply if
   • at least one marriage exists with a man who appears in the local family register, or
   • at least one extramarital relationship exists with a man who appears in the local family register.
   Rule 2a ensures that children listed there without a known father appear somewhere. The addition to Rule 2b ensures that female individuals do not appear unnecessarily often in the local family register.
3. Neutral persons
   1. The person has no parents or their parents are unsuitable.

Reduced entries

For example, if individuals with signatures A and B have been recorded and a local family register has already been created based on signature scheme A , the second local family register can be created by setting the "Include Signatures" option to include signature scheme B and the "Exclude Signatures " option to include signature scheme A This allows you to select individuals with signature B for the local family register and suppress or abbreviate individuals with signature A Tips

Sorting of families

• By default, the person indexes in Omega are sorted by last name/first name/date. However, local family registers are usually sorted by last name/date. To create local family registers sorted in this way, you must first create a copy of the "All Index Cards " person index sorted by last name/date and then use this copy as the basis for the creation.
• When recording individuals, a decision should be made as to whether to use a standardized lead name (e.g., always Schmitt for all spellings of this surname) when surnames have different spellings, in order to make it easier for readers of the local family history book to find specific individuals. The concept of lead names beginning with a period supports this approach.

Use of the signature

• In the standard use case for signatures, local residents are distinguished from non-residents by assigning a predefined signature to local residents during registration, while the signature for non-residents remains blank. If non-residents are then registered as the parents of a father who has moved to the town, these non-residents will be listed as parents in the father's family record – however, a separate family record (with its own sequential number) will not be generated for the parents.
• The call number can also be used to divide the personal data of a card index into two or more sub-collections. This division can be based, for example, on districts or historical periods. For this purpose, call numbers are chosen that can be separated using call number schemes. In the simplest case, in addition to empty call numbers for those from outside the area, call numbers A and B are selected.
  • To generate two family registers from the same card index, corresponding to two consecutive periods, residents of the first period (e.g., before 1815) are marked with A , and residents of the second period (e.g., 1816–1899) with B , while the mark for non-residents remains blank. An analysis using mark scheme A then yields a local family register for the first period, an analysis using mark scheme B yields one for the second, and an analysis using mark scheme A|B ( A or B ) yields a local family register for both periods simultaneously.
  • A similar approach can be used if, at the beginning of the data collection process, one wishes to retain the option of creating either a separate local family register for each district or a single, more comprehensive local family register for all districts of a town. In the case of five districts, residents are assigned one of five identifiers A through E according to their district affiliation. To then create a local family register containing the residents of the first three districts, these are selected using the identifier scheme A|B|C .

Post-processing