R355 : Rudman, Redman, Rodman, Redmond, Redmayne
Conventions
used in the Data
Sources : The majority of this data has been
compiled (and continues to be) mainly from County Records office
material, records at the Society of Genealogists, and with IGI
information as a fall-back. I have vacuumed up all RUDMANs in
Wiltshire whenever and whereever and from whomever (Thank-you all
contributors).
It also has some other related family data of my own relatives.
Connected families have been loaded in some cases, usually where
there is a single line back from a spouse.
I have used several conventions to help me handle the data from
all the different branches of the family, and to overcome the
weaknesses in Family Tree Maker.
1) Dateing all people on file. This helps distinguish same-names
of different eras. The convention I've used is to put in a date
rounded to a five year figure. I've done this by making a
guesstimate from know date, or averages elsewhere. For instance
for a marriage in 1823, I'll take off 20 years, and round back to
the nearest 5 years below. I then enter "c 1800" in the
birth field. You might think this is a bit rough, but it's a
common enough average to work quite effectively.
2) Birth/death locations. I enter the village and county. If the
address where they lived for either event is known, I'll enter
these as facts.
3) I've reset some of FTMs "FACT" fields to specific
items, and use the rest as dated event markers
4) FACT 1 = "Baptism". Where I don't have a seperate
birth date, I've copied the baptism to the birth field since in
most instances there are only short periods in between, and it
makes little difference in genealogical terms. Where there is a
difference, it is nearly always noted in the records as an infant
or adult baptism.
5) FACT 2 = "Relatives". This is used mainly to
overcome an irritating weakness in FTM inproducing reports with
parentage available in the flexible reports. I normally just
record parents first names. This allows me to distinguish
same-names born to different families.
6) Fact 3 = "Location". I enter a 4 letter code to
distinguish association with particular villages. Obviously
people move about, but there's room to enter a few codes. Again,
in reality, using the system has paid off. I enter what
information is known, for instance if a couple's children were
born in Melksham, I'll put "Melk" in this field for
both the children and the parents. In this way I'm noting that
the parents were "associated" with the village, but
were not definitely born there.
7) Fact 13 = "Burial". Church details, or tombstone
text.
8) The other FACT fields are usually "events", where
I'll record references, such as childrens weddings, wills,
Kelly's directory etc. I won't put every child in, but if the
father changes occupation for instance, then that'll go in.
Census returns are against the date. The exceptions are where I
don't know a date, or where I've imported data from another file,
and I get a GEDCOM OCCU record etc.
8) In general I keep the original name. I've got one of those
name's which gets varied for all the usual reasons - the good ol'
wilshire accent, stupid vicars, and transcribers who can't read
or assume things. My rational is that REDMAN is a name in it's
own right (now anyway), and until I know by consulting the
original that this REDMAN is a RUDMAN, I'll leave the spelling
alone. Once I do know, then I'll change it to RUDMAN. I do expand
names, eg Wm to William. (by the way watch out for transcribers
who think "Margt" is "Margot" etc. Where a
name varies through life I'll use the most common (eg Gabryell
-> Gabriel etc).
9) Where spouses maiden names are unknown, I'll enter them as Mrs
married-names. This stops the file cluttering up with
"Unknown"s, and "Ann __"s. Thus Ann will
become Mrs Ann RUDMAN. In all other circumstances I stick to the
usual convention of no titles in the name field. Lady Muck will
have "Ann Muck" in the name, and "Lady" in
the title field
10) I try and flag sources allways. Where I've read in data from
GEDCOMS without sources, I'll flag the file as the source for the
name.
!! STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Sorry ! - haven't sorted out these
contents yet !!