New FTM2012 user having a little trouble understanding the concept behind 'Places'.....

Am I wrong in thinking the design of the system for Places is VERY event driven? I.e., Places automatically appear in the Places list if they're tied to a birthdate, death, etc.

But......if I want to just add a Place that was a significant part of my life, but I wasn't born there, didn't die there, didn't graduate from high school there, or some such, getting them to appear in the Places list is a little more effort than it should be.(??)

I have discovered that I can create an 'Address Fact' and tie it to me and it will appear in Places list. But linking/tieing that address to anyone else in my immediate family doesn't seem doable(?....even though it's every bit as important in their lives as mine.

For example, I was born in Nashville, Tn, but we moved away from there when I was ~ 6 months old. Hence, I have no recollection of the place at all. But yet, just including that piece of info for my birth makes it appear in the Places list. By contrast, I spent my 'formative years' at 82 Stondybrook Lane in Bedrock, Pa. MANY family memories of that location...yet it seems I have to jump through hoops to include it in my life's history.

Am I missing something in the functionality of the program?

Thanks!

Check out the facts you can create by default. One of them surely will apply to your life in that place. If not, create your own fact/event. Your imagination is the only limit.

That I understand. But how do I create an 'Address Fact' for example, and associate it with multiple people?

The address fact is not a shared fact in FTM, but you can create "shared" custom facts. Just hit F4 to create a fact and then choose the radio button for shared, though this will only apply to two people. Click help or hit F1 when you're creating the fact to get more information.

Just give the same address in the Place field of the Address fact (add date, which is usually necessary)

Now, you can view all the people that share that place in two ways:

1) In the Places Workspace. Find the address by starting to type it in the upper part of the left panel. Now, look over to the right panel and you will see all the people that share that address in the Place field. You can "open" all the facts that may share that place by clicking on the "expand all facts" icon at the top of the right panel. You can go to any individual's data page by double clicking on them.

You can print the people that share a fact place in the right hand column by clicking on the Print button at the top of the right panel. But, be careful to pecify "For This Place", or else FTM will start printing a Place Usage Report for every place in your file.

2) In the Family Workspace. At the bottom of index is button that says "filter". Click on that that. Now, click "Filter In". At the top of that dialog will be 3 radio buttons, one of which is on the far right and says "other". Click on that and then click on the left arrow button on the next row that says "any fact". Part way down the list of choices is: "any fact places". Now click the check box to include alternative facts (in addition to primary facts). Now click ok. Click "contains" (or whatever) and put your value in the value box, ie "Barton". Click "All Values" if you need to.

Alternatively, you can select all "birth facts" with Barton in the place field. or all "Address Facts" with Barton in the place field.

Warning: when you get to popular place names like Fremont or Washington, you're going to have to be specific as to what precedes or follows the names. There are Washington towns and counties in (all?/most?) states.



Only the people who are in that place will show in the index.

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If you want to put these types of things on papers, the two reports that are commonly used are the Place Usage Report and the Custom Report. I like the Custom Report because it is more customizable. Once you get it the way you want it, save it.

Hope this gets you started.

SassKwatch,

Each Fact / Event can have 4 components.

Fact Name
Fact Date
Fact Place
Fact Description

Most System Provided Facts are Individual Facts, you can add those facts to any person you want, one at a time.

A couple of System Provided Facts are Shared. Those Facts might be Marriage. That happens to two people.

Place names are NOT automatically provided, YOU have to add them.

When you said "I want to just add a Place that was significant pert of my life". Was that a place where you Lived? If you Lived there, then you could use the Residence Fact.

For example: Residence: Bet 1990 - 2001, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

That would mean that you lived in Baltimore between 1990 and 2001. (just an example)

How do you know "but we moved away from there when I was ~ 6 months old"? Did someone tell you? You can enter that, and still suggesting the Residence Fact.

The ADDRESS fact is similar. The Residence Fact, City, County, State, Country is what would be entered in the Place field.

The address, is where you can be more specific, with the House Number, Street, City, County, State, County.

The Address entry will give you an ICON that It's not resolved with the Place Name Authority. You can mark that warning as Ignore.

Now, why use the "suggested" Place Names, based on the Place Name Authority. Two reasons: Consistency, and the use of the Map feature.

Oh, but I have a historical place name that no longer exists. (county line changed). Again, two choices, Ignore, or Accept the Current Place Name. I don't do either of them. I actually will double enter the place name 1) Historical Place Name, and 2) Current Place Name. Reason: the Map feature.

For your "formative years, I would use BOTH the Address Fact and the Residence Fact. Again, Map feature.

AND, you CAN put the Street Address (82 Stoneybrook Lane) in the Description field, in the Residence Fact, where the Place is Bedrock, Pennsylvania.

Does that help?

Russ

To expand on what Russ and other said,

The concept of FTM is that people have "facts" they are of two kind, 1) personal 2) shared. NOTE: Not all genealogy software works this way, some have "EVENTS", and personal "FACTS", Some allow for the sharing of those events between any number of people while other do not share events in any way.

Shared facts (FTM term) happen to/between two people that are "married", "have children together", "are domestic partners", "make up the adult protion of a family". This is not an exhausted list, pick a concept for the couple. Hopefully you get the idea. :-)

Personal facts are those that occur to a single person. Easy enough. You enter the data in for each person. No two people will have the same set of facts, we are all unique in this way, so sharing does not happen in FTM.

In FTM a fact occurs at a place. A shared fact, (for example: a marriage), happens to two people and they get the same data. In FTM a fact such as an address or vacation, one would think they are shared facts or a "shared event" (my term), but the reality is that you lived at "Bedrock, Pa" during your formative years" but these were different years than a sibbling or your parents and therefore they can not be shared. As Russ indicated you live at "Bedrock, Pa" for a period of time. In FTM you say a fact happened: "BETWEEN 1965 AND 1985", in other software they would say you lived there "FROM 1965 TO 1985".

(SIDE NOTE: Things happen continually FROM .. TO .. where Things MAY have happened some time, BETWEEN .. AND .. )

Anyway.

Many people use the software in different ways. Some use the address fact while other do not. Some enter exact addresses in the PLACE field while other use the PLACE up until the city (i.e. city, county, state, country) and enter the exact address in the description field. Neither concept is right or wrong, BE CONSISTANT, in how you use them. If you intend to share your data with others or expect others to share with you find out how they are entering data.

Adding custom "facts" for some people is very common so that you can describe data in a specific way, this however can get messy if you have many custom facts that are similar but a little different in wording.


I always use the full place value in my place fields. I never enter just "Washington" or "New York", even though it may be obvious within the context of the person or family. It is best (IMHO) to spell out the entire place: New York, {county 1 of 6}, New York, USA

These are just my thoughts, and I know others will dissagree! :-)

Wow, what a bunch of helpful folks! All the replies are MUCH appreciated.

From what everyone has said, I believe I understand how the program works......and I guess that is largely based on the 'science of genealogy'. But there are aspects of what has been said that intuitively I don't grok. For example.....

__kj_norway said__
"In FTM a fact occurs at a place. A shared fact, (for example: a marriage), happens to two people and they get the same data. In FTM a fact such as an address or vacation, one would think they are shared facts or a "shared event" (my term), but the reality is that you lived at "Bedrock, Pa" during your formative years" but these were different years than a sibbling or your parents and therefore they can not be shared."

To my way of thinking, there are some holes in that methodology. For example.....

From 1976-1979, my immediate family (mother, father, brother, and 2 sisters) all lived at the same residence. We obviously were all at different stages in our lives, but all 6 of us did 'share' the same residence. That's a 'fact'.

The lack of a citable 'Residency Certificate' (or some piece of legalese equivalent to a 'marriage certificate') doesn't change that fact...in real life. But apparently does in genealogy s/w...at least FTM.

Conceptually, the notion that a 'fact' cannot be shared by more than 2 people strikes me as a little bizarre.

And kj_norway.....please don't take this personally. I much appreciate your response and acknowledge what you tell me of system functionality is 'fact'. :)

SassKwatch,

No offense taken. :-)

First, please be aware that the terms that FTM uses, such as "fact" and "shared fact" are not genealogical terms per se, they are FTM terms.

You said: "The lack of a citable 'Residency Certificate' (or some piece of legalese equivalent to a 'marriage certificate') doesn't change that fact"

But there is a certificate that you can use in some cases. A census. If a census was taken and you were found to live at a location then you could call that a "fact" (or and event) and make it sharable. FTM however does not allow for you to enter this information once and share it between multiple individuals in your tree, this is a limitation of FTM not genealogy. Other software products do support this concept. These software products say they are "event/fact driven".

Second, you make a great point when you say that in one instance your family lived at a place together from 1976 to 1979. But also many times people of one family unit live in the same house for differing spans of time.

For example.

John and Jane bought a house in 1957.
Bill was born in 1958 and Mary was born in 1960
Bill went to college and never return in 1978
Jane divorced John in 1979 and John move out.
Mary went to college in 1980 returned home in 1984 and married, leaving home in 1986.

You could not enter one shared residence for any of these family members that shows the correct residency time span. So a share fact or event could not be used.

You said: "Am I wrong in thinking the design of the system for Places is VERY event driven? I.e., Places automatically appear in the Places list if they're tied to a birthdate, death, etc."

Places have their own "Workspace", and in that sense, are independent of Facts. But that is irrelevant, because Places are associated with people via facts. So, yes, you could say they are "facts/event driven".

BTW, FTM combines the concept of attribute and event into the idea of Facts. For example, sex, names, and addresses are attributes. Birth, death, moving a residence, and taking a census are events. But all are Facts within the world of FTM.
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You said: "But......if I want to just add a Place that was a significant part of my life, but I wasn't born there, didn't die there, didn't graduate from high school there, or some such, getting them to appear in the Places list is a little more effort than it should be.(??)"

No problem. Add a Fact called Address (or ... Friends, or whatever)

Enter: Date: (whatever)
Place: 12345 Locust St, Wichita, KS
Description: My first girlfriend's home address
or "my first school" (which could also be under Education Fact)

You could setup a custom fact: Girlfriends and list the addreess for all the girlfriends you've ever had by adding Girlfriends facts to your person page.

Or...

Add an address fact:

Enter: Date: (whatever)
Place: 54324 Elm Stree, Cincinnatti, Ohio
Description: My dad's office when I was in fifth grade
(my first job, etc....

____________________

You said: "I have discovered that I can create an 'Address Fact' and tie it to me and it will appear in Places list. But linking/tieing that address to anyone else in my immediate family doesn't seem doable(?....even though it's every bit as important in their lives as mine."

Sure it is doable. Just create the same (or appropriate) fact at their person page and enter the same address (or whatever fact you want, ie residence). When you go to the Places Workspace, you will see everyone who shares that place/address in the right hand panel of the Places Workspace.

For example: You can see all persons in your family born in the same hospital (or home). Or, who all went to the same school. Just select the address in the left panel and all facts and persons associated with that address/place will display in the right panel.

_____________________

You said: "For example, I was born in Nashville, Tn, but we moved away from there when I was ~ 6 months old. Hence, I have no recollection of the place at all. But yet, just including that piece of info for my birth makes it appear in the Places list. By contrast, I spent my 'formative years' at 82 Stondybrook Lane in Bedrock, Pa. MANY family memories of that location...yet it seems I have to jump through hoops to include it in my life's history."

Why is it "going through hoops to enter a second fact?

Address (or residence)
Date: 1960
Place: Nashville, Tennessee
Description: My address when I was 1 year old.

Address (or residence)

Date: 1970
Place: 82 Stondybrook Lane, Bedrock, Pa
Description: My address in Second Grade

They show up in order on your person fact page.