Place Names

Place Names

In the Quick Start Video Tutorial, Gaylon Findlay, the author of Ancestral Quest, talked about why it is a good idea to enter any Place Names as City, County, State or Province and Country. He said the following:

“It is common practice in genealogy to record places in four levels, as city, county, state or province, and country, for US and Canadian places, and similar geographic distinctions for other countries… 

…there are several tools in the program that let you sort or select places. Sometimes it is desirable to select based on city, or state or a country, for example. If you always place the city in the first position, then when the program filters on the first position, it will always be selecting on city. If the program is filtering by country in the fourth position, then by always placing the country in the fourth position, you will get consistent results.”

So what do we do about chapels or cathedrals for christenings, and cemeteries for burials? My suggestion is to remove them from the Place Name. I use Other Events to accomplish this.

I will describe the process for Burial Place, where the cemetery name is moved to the Description in the Cemetery Event, and you can do something similar by moving the chapel or cathedral to the Description in the Christening Event. These Events are pre-defined, but I alter them slightly. In the Christening Event, I change from Descriptions None to Description 1, and I alter the sentence to remove the Place, and include the Description. The Date in the Christening Event will allow AQ to place it in the correct order among the Other Events. (See Event Sentences)

In the Cemetery Event, I add one Date. I don’t  add Date to the sentence because the date is already reported in the Burial Date. I add the date to allow AQ to place the event in the correct order among the Other Events. I remove Place from the Event, along with the Code to put it into the sentence. That will be shown in the Burial Event.

Here is a record for Ann Clark:

St Marys is listed as the place of the Christening.  The cemetery is listed in the Burial Place, and there is no country listed, but lets take care of the Source where we found the Burial information first. I found this source on the Internet at findagrave.com. I’ll click on the S button by the Burial information.

I plan to place FindAGrave into a pre-defined Type called Internet, so I select that Type and I click on the Add button.

I enter the information for FindAGrave and I click the Repository button.

This is the first Repository I am creating, so I can’t just select it from the list. I must click on the Add button to create it.

I enter the information that I and others could use to locate this repository, and I click on the OK button.

Now that the Repository is created, I Select it from the (rather short) list.

Since this database comes from information contributed by many people, I listed the author as Contributors. I selected the quality of the source as Secondary Evidence, because even though they often include photos of the headstones, the headstones themselves are secondary evidence. I click OK.

I Select the Source I just created.

In the next few screens I will use information from the FinaAGrave page.

I will use the Memorial number and the URL.

I type Memorial= and copy the number from the FindAGrave page. I want to be able to link directly to this page from Ancestral Quest, so I click on the Attach button.

If I leave Photo in the Item Type box, Ancestral Quest will try to interpret the URL as an image, and that will not work, so I open the drop down window and change the type to Other. Next I copy the URL from the FindAGrave page.

The Description caption has changed to Filename or URL. I paste the URL into that box, and I click on the OK button.

The URL is now attached, and I could link directly to the FindAGrave page by clicking the View button, but I will let you try that on your own. I will click the OK button.

We now show a Source for the Burial, so we will tackle that new version for a Cemetery Event. We click the Add button.

We highlight Cemetery and click the Edit Type button.

Now we will alter the standard version of the Cemetery Event. We will add Date so that AQ will know where in the list of Other Events to place this when we finish with it, but we will not add Date to the sentence. We will remove Place from the Event because it is already in the Burial Place. We will also remove the code which displays the Place from the sentence.

With the Event altered to our liking, we click the OK button.

Now we Select the updated Event.

We fill in the Date and Cemetery information and click the OK button.

The information in the Burial Event and the Cemetery Event are both found on the FindAGrave page, so we want both to point at the same Source. We will click on the S button by Burial.

The Burial Event already points to the Source, so we click on the Attach to Other Events button.

We highlight the Cemetery Event, then we click first on the Attach button, then the Close button.

Click the OK button to save the citation.

Correct the Burial Place (remove cemetery and add country) and begin the same process for the Christening Place. Remember to change St Marys to Saint Marys. Abbreviations are typically, but not always understood by native speakers of a given language, but they are less often understood by non-native speakers, and not often at all by non-speakers of that language. Abbreviations are also responsible for such errors as LO being interpreted as either the Logan Temple or the London Temple. I go back to the old acronym, KISS. Keep It Simple Smarty, or did I misunderstand one of the abbreviated terms in that acronym? Try working through the process on your own, and let me know how you did.

The Modified Register Book report uses sentences, and will show us how we did.

The place names now conform to the expected City, County, State or Province, Country format, and all the information is retained. 

Suggestions/Questions about AQ Will Do or Subjects discussed here? Leave a Comment Below. I would like to hear from you!

• Posted in: Event Sentences ♦ Events ♦ Genealogy ♦ How to... ♦ Place Names
• Tagged: Event, Event Sentence, Event Types, Gaylon Findlay, Place, Place Name