Birth Place

[donbenish]

My Gedcom was initially created on FTM and the exported to gedcom. Birthplace data that was in place before the export seems to work fine in Ancestris, but birthplace data that I have subsequently entered does not seem to show up in the places I would expect it to show up, such as entity table and reports. The data that I enter does seem to be in the database but is somehow incorrect. How do I figure out what is wrong with the data that I enter? Oddly enough when I try to edit those records that do seem to work right I can't find the data anywhere in the edit pages. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[arvernes]

Hi Don,
Which version of Ancestris are you using? 0.8? 0.9beta?
Can you give us a structure of a birth place?
What is the places hierarchy of your genealogy?
Francois

[donbenish]

I am using 0.8. I am not sure what you mean by structure of a birth place. In Birth places that were created by FTM they appear like "Offerle, Edwards County, Kansas". However for BPs that were created through Ancestris they appear like ", , , Kinsley, , ," .  The later ones do not show up in either the Entities list or in reports. When I create a new one I click the + button and go to the address tab where I enter a city and/or a state and/or a country. In addresses that were created in FTM nothing at all shows up in the edit page for that address.

I am not sure what you mean by Places Hierarchy. If you could explain that and how to display it in the program then maybe I can tell you.

Don

[arvernes]

Hello Don,
Places hierarchy. That's the way the jurisdictional entities are named in your genealogy, from the lowest to the highest jurisdiction.
This is an example:
Parish,City,Zip_Code,County,State,Country
In your example, you have :
Offerle,Edwards County,Kansas
It means your Places hierarchy is :
City,County,State

A genealogy must follow the gedcom specifications. It means that your gedcom file must contain in its header an information in the following format (this is mine)
1 GEDC
2 VERS 5.5
2 FORM Lineage-Linked
1 CHAR UTF-8
1 LANG French
1 PLAC
2 FORM Lieudit,Commune,Code_INSEE,Département,Région,Pays
If I try to translate it in english (the jurisdictions are not the same between the US and France), it could be :
1 PLAC
2 FORM Hamlet,City,Zip_Code,County,State,Country

Now, when you created  your gedcom file from FTM, I don't know whether or not you had such tags in your header, and if the tags were well fullfilled.
When Ancestris loaded for the first time your gedcom file, it applied the default tags as it didn't find the right information.
So now, when you create a new record (birth place, death place, wedding place), it will follow the jurisdictional hierarchy of the header. That's why you can't find the old information at the right places.
I don't remember any more how v. 0.8 works, but v. 0.9beta has been totally rewritten  on the places (jurisdictions) management. You have now a brand new wizard to help you to manage it very easily.
I know there are different ways to manage places in v. 0.8 but I don't remember how they work. Maybe you could open your gedcom file (xxxxx.ged) with a simple editor like notepad for windows, gedit for linux, and check the two tags I speak about above.

If you want your jurisdictions to be the ones you had with FTM, you should write :
City,County,State
If you want to add a Country, you should write :
City,County,State,Country
The number of commas is very important as the jurisdictions must be separated by a comma.
If you write :
,City,,County,State,Country
it means that City will be the second jurisdiction, County the fourth, State the fifth, etc..

Hope that explanation helps. Regards, Francois

[arvernes]

Hi Don,
I would be interested about a gedcom file created by family tree maker, to write a plugin to fix the errors made by FTM regarding the gedcom specifications. That way a person who want to switch from FTM to Ancestris could have a tool to preserve his/her data. If you agree (or someone else) to send one to me, send me a private message with such gedcom file. Of course that gedcom file must be left the way it is from FTM, not load and save by another program (even Ancestris ;-) ). Thanks, Francois

[donbenish]

It did seem to fix it. Apparently the PLAC tag was unfilled for any person who was not imported from FTM. After I inserted the two tags the place hierarchy thing allowed me to set the hierarchy and then when I filled in the place they were recognized by the program and things then worked as they should. Thank you again.

Don

[1miss2mary3]

I have a similar question. I'm having trouble getting Ancestris to let me enter the proper place information I need to enter, even though I know how it should appear in the GEDCOM format.

I'm starting out from scratch with a new Ancestris GEDCOM file for a new branch of the tree I'm researching. I know from preliminary research that this file will span not just a single country, but several countries which have different jurisdictional structures and even different structures over time within each jurisdiction. I need to follow the genealogical standard of reporting place names as they are found in the source documents at the time of the event for what I will be exporting to.

The first problem I've run into is that Ancestris will not let me just type in a place name on the Ancestris entry form. I only get the option of searching for a location and then if I select one, it only puts in the latitude and longitude and no place name even if I find an appropriate one in the search results to select. So how do you just enter a place name?  The only way I can figure out to do it is to enter the GEDCOM editor and manually enter what I want in the PLAC field.

I've read all the manual has to say on jurisdictions. It makes sense if you are only dealing with one country in its present form. But it doesn't tell me how to get in my wide variety of locations as place names.

I finally decided to try to define a generic jurisdictional structure. I came up with the following:
1 Populated_Place
2 Church_Parish
3 City,Lower_Subdivision
4 Mid_Subdivision
5 Top_Subdivision
6 Country
7 Loc_Code
I'm not currently using the Loc_Code but if I learn to understand a certain system I may go back and put them in, but I'm not sure yet. So I put it last.

When defining this in Preferences did not put anything in my GEDCOM file in the header, I went back and added with notepad the following to the header in my GEDCOM file.

1 PLAC
2 FORM Populated_Place,Church_Parish,City,Lower_Subdivision,Mid_Subdivision,Top_Subdivision,Country,Loc_Code

For the United States, Populated_Place will be anything smaller than a city like an small gathering of houses that historically had a name that appeared in documents or a hamlet; Church_Parish is a church parish, City is a City, Lower_Subdivision likely won't be used unless there are some sort of divisions in a county I need to show that isn't one of the smaller places, Mid_Subdivision will be County (or Parish in Louisiana), Top_Subdivision will be State, Territory or District, and Country will be Country.

For Canada, Populated_Place, Church_Parish, and City, and Country will be the same. Top_Subdivision will be Province or Territory.  From there it varies by Province and Territory what the next couple of subdivisions are called and how many there are, but I will follow the structure of the locality putting the next level below the Province or Territory into Mid_Subdivision and the next one down if there is one in Lower_Level.

For Denmark, Populated_Place, Church_Parish, and City, and Country will be the same.  County will go in the Top_Subdivision. Hundred will go in the Mid_Subdivision. And Civil Parishes will go in the Lower_Subdivision in time periods when there were multiple religions in a parish boundary and/or church parish boundaries were not equal to the lowest division of the Hundred.

For modern France, Populated_Place, Church_Parish, and City, and Country will be the same. Departments will go in the Top_Subdivision and so on.

I think this should work.

Sometimes, but not consistently, when I enter the place I'm searching for in the search box with all the proper leading and place holding commas it finds a suitable location that I can use and sometimes when I select replace or complete it will put that place name in and it will appear when I go back to the regular Ancestris form. But much of the time, I go through this process and the latitude and longitude stick, but the rest doesn't. I go back to the Ancestris input form and there is nothing in the grayed out place name spot. If I then look back at it with the GEDCOM editor, the longitude and latitude are there with the MAP tag, but the spot on the PLAC line where the alphabetic description of the place name should be is blank.

More often, the search does not come up with an appropriate place name for the time and source I'm dealing with. Then I need to enter the place manually and the only way I can do that is with the GEDCOM editor.

What am I doing wrong?

[arvernes]

Hello,
First a remark : don't use a comma for your third jurisdiction. You write :
3 City,Lower_Subdivision
I guess it's the culprit.
You should write :
3 City_Lower_Subdivision
Hope that helps. Francois

[1miss2mary3]

Francois,
   I understand your comment, but City and Lower_Subdivision are 2 different levels of jurisdiction.  Some of my countries have a level that in the US would be between City and County sort of like the townships in the US census but more formal and actively a part of government administration. So that is not the problem. Thanks for the suggestion though.
Mary

[FredericL]

Hi Mary,

I will make some tests on my Ancestris application to make sure I can reproduce what you are doing.

I assume you are using Ancestris v0.9, aren't you ?

Also just to check, from which editor do you access the place search : Gedcom editor, or Cygnus editor, or Aries editor, or Geo module ?

I will get back to you in the next few days. I have a number of questions on the way. I hope it's fine with you. In the mean time, it would be great if you could respond to this message, or if you think that a screenshot would be easier, feel free to send it to me to ancestris_en@ancestris.org.

Best regards,
Frederic