TMG: My Custom Flags

My Current Flags

Your choice of custom flags is determined by your research priorities and, to some extent, by your research discoveries. This screen shot of my Flag Manager screen shows my current list of flags. My reasons for creating some of these flags might give you some ideas, too.

DIR_LN: I use this flag to show my children's maternal and paternal direct line. Accent colors identify an individual in the direct on the pick list, Project Explorer, personal screen, etc.
FAMILY: This flag identifies descendants of eight siblings in my main research project. I use it for quick filters and the accent colors quickly identify individuals of the same name and approximate age. This flag controls the family icon in my Second Site reports.
MIL_SERV: The flag values identify in which war a person in the data set served. Although the flag controls the military icon in my Second Site reports, its main purpose is to help me generate research lists. It quickly eliminates all those for whom I have proof of military service from an age-appropriate list of military service candidates.
PENSION: This flag is another flag used to determine research possibilities. Combined with the MIL_SERV, it quickly tells me if a military person received a pension, applied for a pension but was rejected, or apparently never applied for a pension. It also tells me when I haven't searched for a pension record.
Cemetery: Lists of people buried in a given cemetery are easily generated by a List of People report or a List of Events report. I use this flag to control the cemetery icon in my Second Site reports.
SEX: This is obvious and came with TMG.
LIVING: This also came with TMG. It's a very good flag to set when you plan to upload GEDCOM files or family trees to the Internet.
Temporary: This is one of my most useful flags and is vital in printing reports that require complicated filters. The "Census Candidates" report shows this flag in action.
Census_Ana: This flag controls the statistical census report icon in my Second Site reports. It's also the flag I use when I want to continue my analyses of pre-1850 censuses. By combining an age- determining filter with the N value of this flag and filtering the Project Explorer for the results, I have a quick list of people to work on.
DIVORCED: It came with TMG.
ADOPTED: I think this came with TMG.
SIGNATURE: I use this to indicate the fact that I have found at least one document that contains the person's signature. The X value shows that the person signed with a mark.
LITERATE: Combined with other flag and tag values, a person's literacy may help me differentiate individuals of the same name.
SLAVES: Again, this flag value, combined with other values, helps identify an individual and his or her place in society.
PRINCIPAL: This flag identifies whether the person is a principal in the record, the wife of the principal, a military colleague, or "Other". I use this only in one dataset that examines all unindexed bounty land applications for a specific surname.
ISOLATE: This is similar to the Temporary flag but used for only one section of my data set. This flag would probably be unnecessary for most researchers.
SURETY: TMG's sureties are of limited usefulness. This was my attempt to refine the system. I've since decided this is more trouble than it's worth. For those who are interested, these are the values: X=this individual known to be incorrect; 0=information from published genealogy, etc. only; 1=information from undocumented family source, etc.; 2=information from transcribed records only; 3=information from original documents; 4=this individual known to be substantially correct.
BIRTH ORDER: This came with TMG. It's useful if you have evidence for the birth order, such as name order within a will, but have no birth dates. I don't use this very often.
MULTIPLE BIRTH: This is obvious, it came with TMG, and would be very useful to quickly see patterns of multiple births. I seldom remember it exists.
ANCESTOR: This came with TMG and is a carryover from the use of minitafels. It allowed someone sharing data to quickly identify those individuals whose ancestry most interested them.
DESCENDANT: THis is the same as above, but it helps identify descendants of greatest interest. I never use either.

The following are some flags other users have created. I've considered adding some of them myself.

Cause of Death flag
Occupation flag
A Needs to be Edited flag: Many users create this flag when importing data to TMG. Set the initial value of the flag for the imported data to Y. Filter the Project Explorer for that flag value and begin editing. As each person's screen is updated, change the flag value to N.
The Stray flag: Use this flag to identify people with the surname of interest living in the area of interest, but whose family has not been identified.
A Census [Year] to be Done flag. This would be similar to my PENSION flag. A default value of ? shows that no census has been found for a person for a given year. Change to Y when a census is found or N if a search has been made, but no census has been. One reason why I haven't added a flag like this is I'm never sure when my census research is complete. I prefer to keep a log on where and how I've searched for census information on a person instead. Of course, since this is more than one character, I use a custom tag to track my census research.

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