Standardised Locations on a Map

PaulDixon5

A personal record allows the place of birth etc to be set and offers standardised locations.

The problem arises when there is more than one location that could legitimately be assigned the same standardised location. It happens in England where there are two towns with the same name in the same county, e.g. Warton, Lancashire, England.

If I select one of these, is there some way that I can cause Familysearch to display on a map the place of that standardised location to allow it to be determined if the correct location has been selected.

Gordon Collett

This is the purpose of the timeline map. Any place in the Vitals or Other Information section that has a date will show on the map so you can check that you have chosen the right location. Clicking on an event in the left hand column zooms the map to that point:

You can click the Show filter to set a few options as to what shows in the list of events.

Another way to be sure you link a place name to the right standard if you cannot tell from the dropdown menu which of two places you want to use and you find that you are continually picking the wrong one and needed to go back and forth to the time line map such as for Warton:

is to start at the Places database Graham referred to. There you can enter the place name and see where the two different villages are:

Click on one you want to use:

Click on the ID number to copy it to your clipboard then go back to Family Tree and paste the ID number into the place field and you will get just that one place in the dropdown menu:

After you set the standard by clicking in the menu to choose that place, you can edit the place name to add addition information as needed without the linked standard changing:

Just type in the additional information, choose the rust colored text at the top of the drop down menu, and do not click on any of the listed standards.

Graham Buckell

You could open a different tab in your browser and go to https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/

If you enter the name there, it will show you the location on a map.

In these situations, places are often distinguished by adding a label "near XXX" or "next XXX" where XXX is a bigger town nearby. For example, this is used to distinguish the two places called Ash in Kent. One is labelled Ash next Sandwich

Gordon Collett

(I must have switched which village I was looking at between screen shots since the ID on the map is not the ID I pasted into the Place of Residence field. Please ignore that and play like the two numbers are the same.)

PaulDixon5

Thanks to Gordon and Graham for their responses.

Not an intuitively obvious route to finding the location of an event, but simple enough once you know the secret.

Regards, Paul Dixon