Emigration Immigration

Question:

It looks to me as if I need to enter an emigration record, a passenger list record, and an immigration record, then edit the sentences in my software package out of all recognition so that there is any hope of a sensible narrative flow in reports, and also pick which record I will routinely store notes about the journey with.

It all seems very clumsy. Can anyone offer advice or suggestions?

Answer:

I have been struggling with the best way to record emigration/ immigration type information in my software. I generally know the departure date, port of departure, name of the ship, arrival date, arrival port and all the people in the family group. That's two dates, two places (or three counting the ship), and often up to five or six people for one event. Plus in many cases I have some interesting facts about the trip that I want to note (health of the passengers was excellent - only five died!).

It all seems very clumsy. Can anyone offer advice or suggestions?

It is exactly the kind of problems you outline that makes me glad that I use my genealogy program only for recording basic birth, marriage, death, children information so that I can generate pedigree charts and family group sheets and have a basic data base.

I use my word processing program to construct narratives on all of my ancestors, because, like you, I have collected an assortment of interesting information that I want to include in a readable format.

I essentially do family genealogies, using the New England Historical & Genealogical Register format. With a word processing program, it is very easy to update such genealogies and I include all sources in the form of footnotes, also very easy to do.

You haven't picked the wrong list. However if you would tell us what genealogy program you are using we can tell you how to best do what you want.

Also join the list for you genealogy program and ask there.

I don't know what genealogy program you use and I'm sure different programs would handle things in different ways but you might just use one tag or event such as emigration and put the rest of the info in a memo. Something like (people) emigrated from (location) on (date) aboard the ship, (name). Then put any facts about the trip and end the memo with something like: They arrived at (port) on (date) or After a journey of xxdays/months they arrived at (location) on (date). I'm sure you get the idea. I originally had immigration and emigration tags for some of my family but didn't like the way it read so I started using just the one tag and putting the rest into the memo. As I said, I guess it depends on how the program handles sentences and memos/notes if this will work well for you. My program also allows split memos so I can add information on reasons for the emigration such as "because of xxx conditions they emigrated....and then have the second part of the memo pick up with any trip or arrival data.

I'm using TMG, but am thinking of changing to Genbox. I'd like to get some reasonably 'generic' suggestions though, as I don't want to compromise my ability to export information in a way that makes sense to others.

In TMG which I also use, I would use the Emigration Tag to record the departure and I have created a Landing Tag (P and PO landed at L on D)( I think that sounds better) for the arrival. For information on the voyage you could use an Anecdote Tag or a Note Tag with a sort date between the emigration date and the arrival date. I put the parents as the Principals and the children as Witnesses. All miscellaneous information would go in the Tag Memos wherever appropriate.

With the above the sentence structure for each tag does not have to be changed. However the TMG sentence structure is not exported in a GEDCOM file, only the data and the memo.

I suggest that you join TMG-L, if you do not already subscribe, and ask the question there.