Family Historian User Group

This will have been discussed before but I dont seem to be able to locate the answer I need.
I currently record my Address and Place records as follows for a residency fact. For one of my ancestor that lived between 1908 - 1992 I have recorded

PLACE: Northampton, Northamptonshire
ADDRESS: 62 Cyril Street, Northampton, NN1 5EJ

Then for another ancestor who was born in 1839 I have the following residency details

PLACE: Northampton, Northamptonshire
ADDRESS: 24 Fish Street, Northampton, NN1 2AA

The problem I encounter is that the Map facility plots both of these locations as the same point in Northampton? With the majority of my ancestors coming from Northampton I would like the Map facility to plot precise addresses so I can see where in Northampton my ancestors lived and how they moved about.

Can anyone suggest what I am doing wrong and how to fix it. I currently have only 200 individuals in my tree so want to get things right before the issue gets to big to alter.

Thanks Karl

Karl
My understanding is that FH plots places and not addresses.
I do not know of a way to plot at address level.
But it would be a good feature for a future version of FH.
Peter E

Karl,

The Map Life Facts plugin can plot using both address and place. I'm not sure what will happen with the fact that you have duplicated the city name in both the address and place fields, but guess is that it will still work OK.

Bill

There have been lots of discussions on this topic.

FH does only plot Place names in the Map Window and to be blunt does not always do that well, especially outside the UK.
Past advice has said to put Place names in the Place field and Addresses in the Address field, but some users now lump both into the Place field purely to be able to plot their position.
There are Plugins to migrate your Address data into the Place fields if you wish.
However, FH does NOT automatically geocode street addresses and only handles towns and cities (if you are lucky).
So the position of streets must be entered by other means.

It can be done laboriously by hand one address at a time.

The Map Life Facts Plugin can automate the process and will synchronise with FH Place records if you wish.

You can keep your Place and Address fields separate, and Map Life Facts will plot them both on maps, but cannot feed those positions back into FH.

Thanks for all the replies I will have to have a look at all the options available and see which best fits my needs.

Do you always put the place field in the address in addition to the place field.
Leave the place out of the address field. There is no need for that.

I haven't done any maps in FH. I have looked at locations for other things and simply write the full address in my search browser (which ever type you use-Chrome, Firefox IE etc) they always come up with the address location. Even on my mobile if I am going to visit the address

Victor

As I mentioned in an earlier discussion on the topic, if you want to include the place name in the Address (particularly relevant where you want to identify, say, multiple addresses for St John's Church), you can put the double square brackets around it so that it can be hidden in reports - e.g. "St John's Church, [[Bridgwater]]".

There are many schools of thought on this matter.
See glossary:places|> Places and Addresses and its links to earlier discussion threads.

The Gedcom specification to some extent encourages duplication of the Place name in the Address field.
The Place is "The jurisdictional name of the place where the event took place…".
The Address is "The address structure should be formed as it would appear on a mailing label…" so that would typically include the Place name too.

There is also the Church Name argument, where you want to differentiate one St John's Church from another, where they are in different places. Otherwise, in Tools > Work with Data > Addresses every St John's Church, Church Road gets lumped together, and the Merge, Records, Where Used buttons are less effective. The same goes for other recurrent addresses.

As has been mentioned previously, I manually enter the geo-coordinates for all Place records that involve a street address. I initially enter the town/city coordinates to get in the general area. I then zoom in on the map to get down to the street level to find a specific location. I then drag the map marker to that location and I am done. I also use Google Earth to find coordinates for specific locations/buildings as well. The extra time to get this level of accuracy is not an issue for me. I have about 1500 Place records, of which I have manually verified all coordinates for each Place. I never rely on auto geo- coding.

Bob, give my Map Life Facts Plugin a go.
I think you will pleasantly surprised how quick and accurate it will be.
You can still check each new plot manually, either in the Plugin or in FH, and nudge it where necessary.
But I bet that for the vast majority, it will only need a cursory check to confirm the auto-plot is correct.

Bob, you posted a question on Affligem Abbey, Affligem, Belgium yesterday, but all posts after 10pm have been lost.
You asked how the Map Life Facts Plugin would auto-geocode that place.
Well how about this, where the red pin can be nudged over the abbey itself using the N S E W buttons :-
and in the FH Map Window with green marker on the road outside the abbey car park :-

Yes, I did make a post in response to your reply with your posted graphic image on the plug-in. I see that both our posts are gone.

I had responded that the plug-in was very impressive and had asked if you had simply typed in Affligem Abbey, Affligem, Belgium to get the results the way they were displayed in your response, or if some tweaking was required. From your follow-up post this morning (Arizona time), it sounds like you had to do some "nudging" to get the map marker onto the abbey location. Did you get pretty close to the abbey with the initial input?

I also posted a follow-up question last night on whether the plug-in would also work with street addresses, such as: 414 East New Street, Attica, Indiana, USA.

Without any tweaking of the marker, this is where it plots to using the plugin.

The Abbey plots in my screenshots are entirely automatically geocoded by the Plugin, and automatically updated into the FH Map Window. I was simply pointing out that it can be nudged in the Plugin in a similar way that it can be dragged in the FH Map Window, and either will update the other.

That Indiana address is dead-on, i.e., right on the outline of the actual house!

Before I download & use the plug-in, will it make any attempt to change the geo-coordinates that I have already manually coded for the 1500 Place records in my database?

Bob,

In Family Historian in the preferences go to the Map Window section and make sure you check the option to Block Refresh for Non-tentative Geocodes if it is not already checked. If this is not checked then it could re-plot the places when you don't want it to.

I have always had that option blocked. I was just concerned as to whether the plug-in might override it since the plug-in is not part of the original Calico Pie FH coding.

Bob,

The plugin does respect that preference setting so you should be all set to go. Be sure and read the help in the plugin carefully as the options are a bit complicated.

Bob, the Place locations in the Plugin are coloured coded according to their FH Status.
Tentative = Plotted non-Tentative = Defined Blocked = No Plot Unplotted = Invalid/NoData

The Plugin does NOT geocode non-Tentative = Defined locations unless you specifically tell it to do so.
Even if you ask it to Geocode Plot All Locations it checks if you want to include non-Tentative = Defined locations.

See plugins:help:map_life_facts:map_life_facts|> Map Life Facts Plugin Help & Advice for full details not forgetting the Frequently Asked Questions.