* "Non-geographic" place

Questions about managing place and address information, and using maps and geocoding
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Ruth_W
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"Non-geographic" place

Post by Ruth_W »

That probably sounds nonsensical, but let me explain ...

I want to enter some "Places" that are not physical locations, so for instance, Military place = "Royal Navy", death might be "At sea" (not specified more than that), and for dna matches, tested at "Ancestry". Obviously, these can't be mapped, and ideally wouldn't appear in the list of Places.

I had an idea that putting such things in double quotes would do the trick, but this appears not to be the case. It's not something terribly important, but it would be good to keep things tidy.
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AdrianBruce
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Re: "Non-geographic" place

Post by AdrianBruce »

It's not nonsensical at all - I have several similar ranging from "At Sea" to "A Canal Boat somewhere on the Trent & Mersey", via things which are places but so vague that I don't want them mapped.

1. Go to the Places Tab
2. Click "At Sea" or whatever
3. On the toolbar of icons, click the Map icon and select "Map Location of At Sea"
4. That should give a Map Window with "At Sea" and probably no Latitude / Longitude. Right-click "At Sea" and choose "Geocoding / Block (no auto geocoding)".

That should stop any mapping.
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laz_gen
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Re: "Non-geographic" place

Post by laz_gen »

Why not go one stage further and actually map the location of those who died at sea.

I have several individuals on record who died at sea in the Royal navy or Merchant Navy. I looked up the story behind the loss of their ship on various websites such as https://uboat.net/ and https://wrecksite.eu/Wrecksite.aspx

These sites often have a great deal of background story about the ship, its mission, crew and often the latitude/longtitude where it sank.

I look up the latitude and longitude on Google Maps, place a map pin then use the measurement features to find the distance to the nearest land mass.

I then generate a place name such as "330 miles South East of Gibraltar" for Family Historian and manually add the latitude and longitude.
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Vyger
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Re: "Non-geographic" place

Post by Vyger »

Ruth_W wrote: 18 Sep 2023 14:30 Obviously, these can't be mapped, and ideally wouldn't appear in the list of Places.
Anything can be entered in the Place field but wishing for conditional exclusion of non place data is something else.

The "At Sea" is probably common in a lot of projects but outside of that one I have entered no other non Place data in the Place field, that's not what it is for.

Have you considered the Military Attribute for Military related data? and have you considered a custom Attribute for DNA tracking?. There has been lots of methods and discussion on the specific DNA topics previously.

You could also consider the Address field if you are intent on entering other data as Place related, again it is not correct but you are free to enter anything anywhere as long as you realise the downsides.

All my Places contain Places, that is the data they are designed to contain, there are many other ways you can record this data.

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BillH
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Re: "Non-geographic" place

Post by BillH »

laz_gen wrote: 18 Sep 2023 15:22 Why not go one stage further and actually map the location of those who died at sea.
That works if you know where at sea they died. I have several where I have no idea at all. Only that they were at seas.

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laz_gen
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Re: "Non-geographic" place

Post by laz_gen »

I agree it can be difficult.

The key is to find the name of their ship, often shown on military records or the CWGC website.
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BillH
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Re: "Non-geographic" place

Post by BillH »

laz_gen wrote: 18 Sep 2023 21:18 I agree it can be difficult.

The key is to find the name of their ship, often shown on military records or the CWGC website.
For me the dead individuals were not from the UK and were not in the military.

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laz_gen
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Re: "Non-geographic" place

Post by laz_gen »

Sorry, I was only thinking from a UK perspective.
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Ruth_W
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Re: "Non-geographic" place

Post by Ruth_W »

Thanks for the helpful replies. Yes, if I use "at sea", then that is all that is known! And thanks Adrian - I have stopped geocoding of some places, but I hoped there was a way to show that in the text. I hadn't thought of Custom Attributes though - I'll have to have a play around. I very much use FH 'as is' without customising it too much yet.

Edited to say, I have just played around in the sample project, editing the custom attributes and seeing which codes do what to the sentence, and I think I've sorted it to my satisfaction. The hidden 'Military Service' also seems to do what I wanted, better than my custom one, so thanks for giving me a nudge in the right direction! (Jackson, I think you have done some useful videos, so thanks for that too!)
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