Family Historian User Group

When entering the details of a census entry using AS, which place should I put in the 'place' field? Should it be the registration district or the town/village where the individual or family lived (assuming this is different from the registration district)? So for instance I have a family living in the town of Chesham in Buckinghamshire, in a part of Chesham called Waterside. Chesham is in the registration district of Amersham. What exactly should I put in the Pace and Address fields?

Many thanks

Lizzie

ID:6271

Lizzie, this is perennial question that even experts argue over.
The Knowledge Base entry for Places is useful background.

The most important concept is to be consistent with your use of Place and Address fields across all Facts.
Also organise your Place and Address data into logical comma separated columns so that Tools > Work with Data > Places/Address can usefully sort your data.
This may mean entering extra commas to create blank columns sometimes.
However, in most cases these are automatically tidied in Reports, etc.

I enter the Registration District, County, Country as the Place e.g. Amersham, Buckinghamshire, England.
I enter the Residential Details as the Address e.g. 123 Waterside, Chesham, Buckinghamshire, UK.
But others would put Place = Chesham, Buckinghamshire, England,
and enter Address = 123 Waterside,
so the two together give the full Residential Details,
and relegate the Registration District to the Source transcript Text From Source.

Remember that prior to 1837 there were no Registration Districts so I would use the Parish of the Church Register.

I go for the place being village or town level, something like:

Waterside, Chesham, Buckinghamshire

Address would be blank unless there was a road recorded.

There are many different ways that a place might be described in the census, but they're just an administrative description, they are still the same place so I 'normalise' place names so I might always record a place as e.g. Stockton Heath, Cheshire even though it is sometimes described as Stockton Heath, Warrington, Lancashire or Stockton Heath in the parish of Great Budworth, Cheshire.

I'd use the source text to record the details of parish, registration district if you feel the need to do that.

Nick

Many thanks to both tatewise and Nick. I can see that consistency is the really important thing here, so I will continue to put the town/village and county into the place field and not worry about the registration district.

Can I just add my thanks to Nick for his wonderful Ancestral Sources programme which is such a joy to use.

Lizzie

As the Knowledge Base entry for Places recommends I would advise you also record the Country.
It may seem unnecessary now, but it will almost certainly be worthwhile eventually.

Good point, do add country to end. I didn't do this originally (I started computerising my tree data nearly 20 years ago) and I must admit I still haven't added England to my places yet because I know I'll be able to easily do so one day if I feel the need. However, it is the 'correct' thing to do and I recommend it - I just don't always follow my own advice

Thanks Lizzie for the kind words regarding AS.

Nick

This is where the search and replace plugin comes in handy
Search in Places for shire and replace with shire, England.
Half the English counties done in one go.

johnmorrisoniom said:

Search in  Places for shire and replace with shire, England. Half the English counties done in one go.

Beware, John.  Many historic Scottish and Welsh counties also end in 'shire'!

Very true,
I hadn't thought of that. However, I did put England in all my entries to start with. I used the search and replace to remove United kingdom from the end of each place