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From: "Caroline Gurney" <>
Subject: [TMG] Individual Narrative report
Date: Sat, 3 May 2003 18:33:55 +0100
References: <1d9.8b4f507.2be3495a@aol.com> <006001c310a7$4fe20060$0200a8c0@caroline> <3EB3AFAC.52E127C3@bellatlantic.net>


Bob Gillis wrote:

> Caroline, I think one reason that TMG has not developed another report
> format is that you European (and I include the Commonwealth)
> genealogists do not have any established report format.

<snip>

> A number of people have requested a strictly chronological report which
> is probably coming. However I wonder how readable such a report would
> be:
>
> "John was born in 1875, John was in the 1881 Census with his parents; he
> graduated from University in 1898, he appeared in the 1901 Census living
> with a family in London where he was studying law, he married Alice in
> 1905, he became a barrister in 1907, son William was born 1909, he
> became a leftenant in 1914, daughter Emily was born 1916, he fought in
> the Battle of the xxxx in 1916 where he was wounded, he was discharged
> as a Major in 1919, he became a QC in 1924, he died in 1949 and was
> buried in St Albans Cemetery."
>
> If you can come up with a consensus of a British report as our Swedish
> member has, I am quite sure that Bob V will consider it. I do not
> remember anyone proposing another format except a strictly chronological
> one.
>
> I think any format will have to group the children so that a reader can
> tell who they are without wading through a lot of detail.

Bob,

I have changed your revised subject heading because the report we have been
discussing in this thread is actually the Individual Narrative (IN), not the
Journal Narrative. So I am not asking for TMG to provide another Journal
Narrative report format for British & Commonwealth genealogists. As I
explained in my earlier posting, we do not use a standard report format and
we probably couldn't arrive at a consensus if we tried <g>.

What I and a number of other people (mostly in the USA, actually) have been
asking for is for Child tags to be included in the Individual Narrative,
with the sentences appearing in the appropriate place by Date/Sort Date. If
this is what you mean by a "strictly chronological report" and you know some
reason for saying it is "probably coming" then I am delighted. My own
reading of Bob Velke's previous responses on this issue was that he was not
yet convinced such an addition to the IN (which would involve adding
sentences to Parent/Child relationship tags) was necessary.

I do not see why such a report should be less readable than the current IN
without child tags (for example, it is confusing that my great-grandmother's
IN says she died in childbirth but does not mention the birth itself) or the
Journal
report which puts takes BMDB events out of their context and puts them
together at the start of the report.

Any report format will be unreadable if it simply lists dates and places of
events as in the example you give. I make extensive use of the Memo field to
try and add interest. I have had a particular challenge in the case of my
great-grandfather, Rev Joseph Bentley, who served as a Wesleyan Minister in
17 different places during the course of his career. A list of all 17
places, with dates, would be dull in the extreme. The following 4 extracts
from his IN show how I have tried to avoid this:

Occupation tag:

His first station as a Minister was at Andover in Hampshire where he stayed
for nearly a year from September 1864 to June 1865. The Circuit Records
contain payments to Mr Bentley for bringing his luggage to Andover and
sending it on to his next station. There are also preaching plans which show
that he followed the standard Methodist pattern of preaching at the
different Wesleyan chapels on the Circuit on different Sundays, sharing the
"rota" with the senior Minister on the
Circuit and with lay preachers.

Occupation tag:

>From 1866 to 1867 he was the second Minister on the Circuit at Wimborne,
Dorset. He probably had lodgings at Cranborne, as a minute from the
Circuit's Quarterly Meeting in 1865 stated "young minister to reside still
at Cranborne". The Superintendent Minister at Wimborne in 1866 was Rev. John
Bissell. It was possibly through him that Joseph met his future wife, whose
grandmother was a Bissell from Fordingbridge, near Cranborne.

Occupation tag:

Joseph was stationed at Northallerton in the North Riding of Yorkshire from
1872 to 1874. Bulmer's History and Directory of North Yorkshire, published
in 1890, described Northallerton as "a small country town, depending almost
solely for its prosperity on the agricultural produce of the district" and
went on to say: "The Wesleyans erected their first chapel in 1796. This was
superseded in 1865 by a more commodious structure in semi-Gothic style,
built at a cost, including
minister's house and school, of £3,250." This would have been the equivalent
of a £160,000 building project today. Joseph and his family would have lived
in the newly built minister's house. According to Bulmer, the school was a
mixed day school and opened the year before Joseph arrived.

Occupation tag, followed by Photograph tag, followed by Witnessed Death tag:

>From 1877 to 1880, Joseph was Wesleyan Methodist Minister at Spennymoor,
County Durham. A photograph of Joseph exists, taken by the firm of J Yeoman
and Co of Tudhoe Grange, Market Place, Spennymoor. The photograph has
suffered
badly from damp but, after digital enhancement, it reveals a handsome,
bearded man with an aquiline nose and fine bonework. A companion photograph
of Joseph's five children, by the same studio, was probably taken at the
same time. Sadly, one of those children, Joseph's second daughter, Mabel,
known as Mamie, was to die at Spennymoor on 12 January 1880, aged 8.

Incidentally, apropos another thread, I should like to have both
photographs, attached to the above Photograph tag, print in the IN report.

Caroline Gurney
Portsmouth, UK


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