Advanced Features of GenDetective®
GenDetective® has many features which enable you to customize the behavior of GenDetective including:
- Define a new census
- Define a military conflict or draft registration
- Teach GenDetective® to recognize your custom events
- Alter the definition of a country or create a new country
- Teach GenDetective® to interpret your number of children event
All customizations take affect as soon as you re-analyze your GEDCOM file. No more waiting for product updates; your changes are immediately reflected!
Census definitions in GenDetective® are organized by country, state (optional) and year. A census substitute (a voter registration) can be defined, as long as it is a state wide registration.
Once you re-analyze ...Once you re-analyze ...
your GEDCOM file your censuses will be incorporated into all reports!
To define a new census (substitute) you need the following information:
- Country
- State (optional)
- Year(s): For each year, the type of data that was recorded for each person or household (name, age, occupation, education, birth year, etc).
To view the GenDetective® sample census reports, click here.
Do you use custom events when working with your family tree? Some genealogists
use custom events to: use custom events to:
- Distinguish between state and national censuses
- Track custom sources, such as an obituary
- Track military service by war (Revolutionary War, Civil War, etc)
If your custom events are a subset of a standard event, GenDetective® enables you to identify the relationship. To map a custom event to the standard event, change the Event is Unique field to the appropriate event. In the image shown below, examine the cen1 and cen2 rows.
After re-analyzing your family tree, your custom events will be treated the same as the standard event.
To associate a custom military event with a specific war, use the Military Conflicts option in the GenDetective Analyzer, changing the My event option from No event associated with this conflict to your custom event. Make sure you save your changes and after re-analysis the custom event will be interpreted as military service associated with the war you selected.
Military conflicts are defined in GenDetective® by each country that participates in the conflict. Take World War II, as an example, where more than 100 countries supplied combatants
and supplies. For each and supplies. For each
country that participated in the conflict, the beginning and ending years of the war may be different, as are the desired ages for combatants! GenDetective ships with many wars predefined. However, the war definitions are not an exhaustive list, and is geared toward US and Canadian researchers. If a war is not defined for your country, use the GenDetective Analyzer to define it! After re-analyzing your family tree, the war will be incorporated into all of the military service reports!
To define a new war you will need the following information:
- War name
- Abbreviation for the war (personal research worksheets)
- Country this definition applies to
- Desired age range for service
- Year the conflict begins and ends
- Notes you wish to associate with the war, including where the service records can be located.
To view the GenDetective® sample military reports, click here.
Country definitions in GenDetective® can be altered to get a better match rate for the places in your family tree. When GenDetective analyzes your familiy tree, it arranges your family information
onto a geographic basis.onto a geographic basis.
The benefit, is immediate, especially in the area of trip planning. However, to get the most benefit from the geographic features in GenDetective, your place names should be standardized. If you use custom names for locations, or custom abbreviations, you can alter the way GenDetective interprets your event locations. You can:
- Create new countries
- Modify country names and abbreviations
- Create new states, or territories
- Modify state abbreviations
Any locations that GenDetective is unable to interpret are assigned to the Unknown Country. For additional information on standardizing your place names, and the help that GenDetective can provide please read Help Standardize My Locations!
Have you ever recorded, or wondered if you should record, the number of children information from a census, will, letter, obituary or any other source, for someone?
Questions you may have asked yourself:Questions you may have asked yourself:
- Should I record the number of children reported?
- What about the number of living children?
- How would I use this information?
GenDetective® includes a Number of Children Summary which identifies any conflicts that exist between the information reported at a specific date and the current definition of the family (the children, who is living and dead on the date).
Use the Analyzer to tell GenDetctive® how to interpret the information you record:
- The event you use to record the information
- The order in which you record at least number of children:
- 3 children
- 3 children, 2 living
- 2 living, 1 dead
- 3 children, 2 living, 1 dead
If you are consistent in recording the number of children information, GenDetective® will be able to identify the discrepancies for you!
