Family Historian User Group

Good afternoon,

I had a bit of spare time on my hands and made the mistake of reading some posts on the forum, which should have been a pleasant way to pass the time, but I've ended up with a bit of a mystery.

I rarely look at the map window, but I'm convinced I used to have lots of map pins on there. Today when I looked I just had a blank map. I've looked in the 'places' tab and most of the places have their latitude/longitude listed (surprised at some of the places that haven't), so that's not the issue. Has something changed along the way which I haven't noticed or am I just missing out something obvious because I rarely use this feature? It's probably just me - it usually is!

Many thanks,

Pauline

There are lots of different ways of opening the map window. Which option did you take?

The View Map Window presents a "blank" map where you can use the options to select the people to add pins for.

I went View - more workspace windows - map window. How do I select who or where to view? I haven't got a clue what I did before.
Thanks,
Pauline

Click on the Map Pin icon on the tool bar and select the window you want from there

Sorry! Didn't even see it. I knew it had to be me!
Thanks,
Pauline

I've got four people buried at sea and they're all off the coast of Perth, Australia. Not sure how I've managed that.

Am I right in thinking that I could separate them out by specifying a particular sea or ocean within the place? I've got a last known position for a submarine, but other than that it's pretty vague, such as 'Atlantic Ocean' or 'English Channel'. They'll be popping up in the middle of nowhere.

It's a brilliant resource now I know how to make it work. I've just tracked my husband's rather adventurous great aunt across the world. I hadn't realised just how much detail I had about her until I saw it mapped out. I can see I'm going to be using this a lot more.

Many thanks for sorting me out. Have a happy Christmas and a healthy new year.

Pauline

For deaths or burials at sea I have a place called 'at sea' but I have blocked the geocoding so that it doesn't appear anywhere on the map. (In the Map window select the place in the list and then use Map > Geocoding > Block (no auto geocoding). )

If you do know roughly which bit of sea an event happened in you could, as you say, give them different place names and if the automatic geocoding can't cope you can manually drag the marker for each one to the right area.

You probably just have the place as "at sea", you could change the place to a sea as you suggest, or what I did for my "unlucky" souls was to put "the Atlantic Ocean (sinking of HMS Hood)" for the place and then put it in the correct geo location if I had it.

Sorry Lorna (great minds think alike)

Many thanks Lorna and Jane. I can see I'm going to be busy tidying up my map this evening.
Pauline

Paulinelp wrote: ↑

18 Dec 2019 15:54

.... I've got a last known position for a submarine, but other than that it's pretty vague, such as 'Atlantic Ocean' or 'English Channel'. They'll be popping up in the middle of nowhere.
...

But one of the problems is that a "map pin" implies a single point, when without an address, we mean "an area" - a parish/a village/a town/a county even a country.

"Born USA" tends to resolve to a single point in an arbitrarily defined mid point of the USA - that nearby farm sure had a lot of births deaths and marriages!

Flippant aside ...

davidf wrote: ↑

18 Dec 2019 18:35

... "Born USA" ...

Do we get a prize if we didn't hear Springsteen in our head at that point? I don't qualify because I did hear him...

Now you've done it! I'll be singing it ever y time I open the map window!