* place / address

[Devonjon]

Apologies this may be a basic one from a FH newbie.

My data migrated from an Ancestry GED. I can see either through that origin or through my own poor practice that my FH data for places contains predominantly specific addresses. I do overtime want to correct this so I work to what I believe is the correct practice of place being town, county, country and address being house number (or named location such as St John Parish Church) , street, town, county, country.

A few things then :

- on the individual records (database) , you have the tabs, individuals, source etc. It has a tab for places but not addresses. Is that due to GED restrictions or can that address tab be added somehow? Whilst I have alot of unique house number type things (incorrectly) listed on place tab I do have quite a number of churches that I'd like to harmonies naming format so I can see how overtime a single church has had multiple generations and different families passing through.

- perhaps related. I notice when I amend an individuals entry to correct place and address form I see the auto generated sentence for say a narrative report changes and becomes in a way less useful. For instance John Smith would now be christened in Anytown , County, Country rather than St Idles Parish, Anytown, County Country. I imagine one can change this format but to do for all would be a challenge. Is there a default way of switching so an address can be referenced by default for all individuals and I suspect for most facts?? Why is the default to the less useful 'place' ?

- map. the map uses places. So for instance for Aberdeen, whilst I have full address details for many the map would just show one flag for Aberdeen with all of them listed under that. Instead of what one would hope that you view Aberdeen in relative close up and see the spread of individuals across the city and see how say different branches of family 'lived round corner' so to speak from each other. Can addresses be mapped in this way or is that not as easy as it sounds ?

Many thanks for any pointers.

Cheers
J

[tatewise]

Jon, welcome to the FHUG. As a newcomer you may find how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers has much useful advice, including Places and Addresses that has links to many Forum postings on the topic.

A few answers:

- Records Window has some hidden tabs. Use Tools > Preferences > Records Window and set Record Type Display Options all to Always show. However, there is no Addresses tab, because GEDCOM defines no Address Records nor Place Records. The FH Place Records are a non-standard extension to GEDCOM that often will NOT transfer to other genealogy products. See Tools > Work with Data > Places/Addresses.

- Sentence Templates can change the defaults but there is no magic switch. Use Tools > Fact Types and for each Fact you can Edit the Sentence Template to include the {address} code. Start a new Forum topic if you need further advice.

- Map Window only handles Place Records and is discussed at length in the Forum topics listed in Places and Addresses mentioned above. In brief, you must choose between the 'correct' use of Place and Address and keeping some Address details in the Place field to obtained more precise mapping. However, the Map Window geocoding engine is currently poor at such precise mapping, and is sometimes even poor at finding towns and cities in some parts of the world.

- Plugins that you may find useful in this context include Rearrange Address an Place Parts and Map Life Facts and Search and Replace.