* Place Details - Where can I put them?

[kfunk_ia]

In my previous workflow, I had a 'Place details' field to work with. This was in addition to 'Place' and 'Description'. I used place details for things like cemetery name, name of a hospital where someone was born/died etc. The place field contained things such as the city, county, state, country and so forth. I am at a bit of a loss as to how to handle data that once went into the 'Place details' field.

For example, I have a Burial fact/event. I would enter the date (if known) into the date field. I would enter the location of the cemetery in the place field (for example - Ottumwa, Wapello County, Iowa) and I would enter the cemetery in the 'Place details' field. The default sentence for this would print out something like 'John Doe was buried at Shaul Cemetery in Ottumwa, Wapello County, Iowa'.

There was something similar for birth and death. I could enter things like 'home', or a hospital name, or care facility name. There would be a similar sentence printed for that fact/event.

On import of the GEDCOM file, these place details all appear to have moved to the Address field (Technically they are not addresses, just places), but I do need to have them print similar to how they were before. Right now, the individual narrative report just states 'He was buried in Ottumwa.' Yes, I am aware there is the checked option for short place names, so it only gives me the city, and that is fine. Is there a way to print the cemetery/hospital/care center etc...

I do not wish to combine these places in the 'Place' field so that I would end up with a whole bunch of extra places such as:
121 Main St., Ottumwa, Wapello County, Iowa
Shaul Cemetery, Ottumwa, Wapello County, Iowa
Ottumwa Cemetery, Wapello County, Iowa
Sunnyslope Care Center, Ottumwa, Wapello County, Iowa etc.....etc...

I have hundreds of place details for many cities and counties.

I have been reading various threads in regards to cemetery names but the gist of them seem to be to combine the locations in the place field. I also read through a thread called 'Address and Place, yet again'. I will re-read and see if I can find something that works for me. Are any other possible options for me?

[BobWard]

I put all my Place details in the Note box on the PLACE record. This includes a complete history of the Place, some of which are quite lengthy.

[BillH]

There are many discussions on the forum on how to do this. I personally put the address and "name" of the address into the address field and reserve only the city and higher level items into the place field.

In the address field I would put the name of the building, company, church, cemetery, etc. followed by the address.

Examples:

Allegheny Cemetery, 4734 Butler Street,,, [[Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]]
Immanuel Lutheran Church, 605 S Walnut St,,, [[Clarinda, Iowa]]
Robinswood House, 2430 148th Ave SE,,, [[Bellevue, Washington]]

The values in [[ ]] do not appear in reports. I use them to help me keep addresses unique if I have more than one entry with no street address so I can tell them apart.

For example:

Highland Cemetery,,,, [[Kansas City, Missouri]]
Highland Cemetery,,,, [[Lock Haven, Pennsylvania]]
Highland Cemetery,,,, [[Ottawa, Kansas]]

In the place field I would put the city, county, state, USA, or farm, parish, municipality, county, Norway, etc.

Examples:

Cedarhome, Snohomish County, Washington, USA
Dørheim, Ølen, Fjelberg, Hordaland, Norway
Bersenbrück, Bramsche, Osnabrück, Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), Germany

People use the fields differently and some don't use both. The main thing is to pick what works for you and be consistent.

Bill

[tatewise]

There are a number of considerations that affect how best to use the Place field and Address (Place details) field.
See glossary:places|> Places and Addresses that clarifies some of the points mentioned earlier and has several links to related Forum discussions.

There are some key decisions to be made.
Do you wish to use the Map Window for auto-geocoding, and if so, down to what resolution?
Do you wish to export GEDCOM to other products, many of which do NOT support Address (Place details)?

Those answers determine what to keep in the Place field and what in the Address field.

[kfunk_ia]

Examples:

Allegheny Cemetery, 4734 Butler Street,,, [[Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]]
Immanuel Lutheran Church, 605 S Walnut St,,, [[Clarinda, Iowa]]
Robinswood House, 2430 148th Ave SE,,, [[Bellevue, Washington]]

I have considered something like this however I have thousands of places that would require me to manually edit them. Before I do that, can you share how all of this prints out in the reports? I am assuming you somehow combine the address and place for your output?

[kfunk_ia]

There are a number of considerations that affect how best to use the Place field and Address (Place details) field.
See glossary:places|> Places and Addresses that clarifies some of the points mentioned earlier and has several links to related Forum discussions.

There are some key decisions to be made.
Do you wish to use the Map Window for auto-geocoding, and if so, down to what resolution?
Do you wish to export GEDCOM to other products, many of which do NOT support Address (Place details)?

Those answers determine what to keep in the Place field and what in the Address field.

Mapping has never really been a big consideration as the RootsMagic mapping facility isn't all that I could hope for. I have and do record GPS coordinates, especially for cemeteries as most of them are rural, and someday I hope to find them. I would someday like to make use of mapping tools, especially if I decide to assemble a book. I suppose it make sense to have that as a consideration now.

Yes, I do send GED files to relatives, most who use FTM or RM. I also periodically dump my material to Ancestry to serve as cousin-bait too.

[tatewise]

Firstly, none of us explained how to include the Address field with the Place field in Reports.
In the Individual Summary Report and Family Group Sheet they are both included by default.
In the Narrative Reports they depend on the Sentence Template in Tools > Fact Types.
The typical default is {individual} was born/baptised/buried {date} {place} {age}
To add Address use {individual} was born/baptised/buried {date}< at {address}> {place} {age}
The < angle brackets > are needed to make the word at conditional on the Address existing.
For example it would say: He was buried on 1 May 1900 at Highland Cemetery in Ottawa, Kansas, USA aged 80.
See how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates for more details.

Geocode Mapping
Each Place record has a field to record Lati/Longitude either auto-geocoded or manually entered.
Similarly, other general notes or GPS values or photos can be saved per Place record.
So to record that for each cemetery clearly requires cemetery names to be included in the Place field.
(That also overcomes the problem of lots of Highland Cemetery in different Places as illustrated by Bill.)
Alternatively, where could you record such information?
There is no global Address record, so it would have to be repeated in every Address field, or in some linked shareable Source or Note record.

Export GEDCOM
Use the Export Gedcom File Plugin to convert into the appropriate GEDCOM dialect for each product.
RM imports the Address (ADDR) field as Place details without a problem.
Ancestry does not support ADDR so the Address is optionally move to a Note or into the Place field.
FTM does not support ADDR so the Address is moved to the Event description, but that is not allowed for Attributes so gets discarded.
However, if it is not crucial that Address details reach the target then none of that matters too much.

[BillH]

I have considered something like this however I have thousands of places that would require me to manually edit them. Before I do that, can you share how all of this prints out in the reports? I am assuming you somehow combine the address and place for your output?

Mike beat me to it. As he explained, in many cases the address and place are combined by default. The other reports can be modified to combine the address and place.

If you do end up geocoding your locations, I recommend Mike's plugin, Map Life Facts, which does a much better job than the built in FH geocoder (IMHO).

Bill