Page 1 of 1

Mapping Issue

Posted: 13 Mar 2019 15:45
by Jonathan_Smith
I am currently using Family Historian Version 6.2.7
I have never used the ‘Map’ window before and thought that I’d try it out. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that it’s mapping people/individual’s to countries and locations that have nothing to do with them etc. i.e. Please see 4 examples below:-
1) A marriage licence for ‘Cairns Memorial United Free Church in Edinburgh is being mapped to Cairns in Australia.
2) A Christening in ‘Christ Church, Coalville, Nuneaton’ is being mapped to New Zealand.
3) Western General Hospital in Edinburgh is being mapped to South Africa.
4) A marriage in Fordyce, Bannfshire, Scotland is being mapped to Fordyce in Arkansas in the USA.
Is there something I’m not doing correctly, plus, how can I correct this please and stop it from doing this?

Re: Mapping Issue

Posted: 13 Mar 2019 16:11
by Jane
It sounds as if you have addresses with out full details in the PLACE field

So Cairns Memorial United Free Church in Edinburgh should have an address of Cairns Memorial United Free Church with a
Place of Edinburgh, Scotland.

or at worst you should have a place of
Cairns Memorial United Free Church, Edinburgh, Scotland in your place field.

If you don't want to put place names in fully you can drag and drop the places manually to the correct place on the map and they will stay there.

Check out the Geo-coding section of the Workspace 8 Mapping Window in the Family Historian Help, to understand how Geo-coding works.

Re: Mapping Issue

Posted: 13 Mar 2019 17:04
by Jonathan_Smith
Thanks Jane,
I didn’t realise that you really needed to enter the full address details in the Place section e.g.

In the Place entry I had only entered ‘Cairns Memorial United Free Church’ as in the Address section I have entered the address as ‘The Caledonian Hall, 74 Dalry Road, Edinburgh, Scotland’.

Oh well, a quick trip around the world to change them all !!

Thanks for your quick reply.

Re: Mapping Issue

Posted: 13 Mar 2019 18:00
by ColeValleyGirl
Jonathan

you might want to look at the Rearrange Address and Place Parts plugin to see if it will shorten your trip around the world... It's very likely that Mike Tate (who wrote it) will be along soon with some advice.

Re: Mapping Issue

Posted: 13 Mar 2019 18:52
by Jonathan_Smith
Thanks Helen,
After amending all the places to include the full addresses I then found I also needed to delete the spurious place entries from the Map List Pane.
I thought I was getting somewhere until I (unfortunately) decided to check locations in the UK looking at places where I don’t have and ancestors or descendants and discovered for example that where I had entered in the Place field ‘Hendon, London’ it had mapped it to a Hendon in Sunderland. I changed it to Hendon in London and its now okay.
Looking at the rest it’s going to be a major task to change them for example I’ve entered a place as a ‘Willesden Middx, England’ and it’s mapped to a ‘Wilden’ (different spelling) near Bradford . To be honest, I can’t see some the logic behind some of this i.e. The Parish Church, Chivers Coton, Warwichshire is mapped to Market Street (B6231) in Oswaldtwistle near Accrington!!

Re: Mapping Issue

Posted: 13 Mar 2019 18:57
by dewilkinson
I make extensive use of the mapping facility and find it gives mixed results. Sometimes it finds the place down to street level and close to the house number on occasions (that might just be luck though). On about 10% of occasions it is way off, sometimes in a completely different part of the country, so manual intervention is required.

For recording places I only use the Place field with commas such that the country is always in the sixth column, as you can see on this forum some use the address field as well. My personal standard for UK places is:-
1. house/business name
2. house number and street
3. parish/hamlet
4. town
5. county
6. country
7. spare used for post codes etc

I use a variant for US etc places.

I have got into the habit of every time I create a place I map it at that time.

One thing I have found annoying is it is easy to click on Map All Places so you just have to wait. Also, I have switched Mark Auto-geocodes as Tentative to Always so I can easily spot those I need to manually check out.

Re: Mapping Issue

Posted: 13 Mar 2019 21:35
by tatewise
See the how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers topic on Places & Addresses.
In glossary:places|> Places and Addresses checkout the Forum Posts on Places and Addresses.

There are many issues associated with Place and Address fields and geocoding in FH V6.
So before you decide on your final policy, read up on the alternatives, try some examples, and ask for advice here.
Whatever you decide, it needs to be implemented consistently across all your Facts.
If you have a regular structure to your existing Place and Address entries then there are tools to help restructure.
The Tools > Work with Data > Places and Addresses are useful, and so is the Places tab in the Records Window.
The Rearrange Address and Place Parts Plugin can move column parts around for bulk changes.
The Map Window can help too with manual plotting corrections.
There is also the Map Life Facts Plugin that provides alternative geocoding features.

The geocoders used in the Map Window and the Map Life Facts Plugin and Google Maps in a browser, all try and plot modern place names. They rarely know the names of buildings unless they are tourist attractions. They will tend to prefer well known places unless you specify town, county & country fully to give a context for the place. That is why Cairns Memorial United Free Church plotted in Cairns, Australia because the geocoder has no knowledge of that church building, and even a general Google Search struggles to find it.

Re: Mapping Issue

Posted: 13 Mar 2019 23:31
by victor
As far as the UK is concerned always add the county. There are similar named places in different counties. Any places in Yorkshire one needs to add whether it is East, West of North Yorkshire, As an example there is
Scalby in North Yorkshire (it is north of Scarborough) there is also Scalby in East Yorkshire (it is next to Gilberdyke, West of Hull)
Another is Hessle East Yorkshire (near Hull) , which happens to be my birthplace and also Hessle, West Yorkshire (near Wakefield).

Victor