I run the One Place Studies website at http://www.one-place-studies.org/ and am undertaking a one place study myself. Is there anyone else on this list doing an OPS? I’m particularly interested to hear if/how you are using Family Historian for any part of your OPS. I had previously thought that traditional genealogy software wasn’t really appropriate to the task, but I am now wondering if some of the features of Family Historian could, in fact, be turned to the actual process of family reconstruction – for example having custom queries to help you identify where separate source records more than likely refer to the same individual, and using the Merge function to combine those previously discrete individuals into one individual. Are there other ways in which Family Historian could be used for an OPS? Alex in Auckland NZ

Hi Alex, Although I am not doing a ONS. I suspect the Query options available in FH will certainly be of use. I know with my own research, I have ended up with a large percentage of several small Dorset villages and you can use addresses to select facts in queries this should help in tracking house use etc. On 27 February 2012 23:58, Alexandra Coles <ahcoles@yahoo.co.nz> wrote: > I run the One Place Studies website at http://www.one-place-studies.org/ and am undertaking a one place study myself. Is there anyone else on this list > doing an OPS? -- Jane. Jane Taubman | www.rjt.org.uk | www.taubman.org.uk |www.fhug.org.uk

Hi Alex I had been doing my family tree for years, when I embarked in 1978 on a one place study on Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire, England. I began with cards and paper and soon had transcripts of the PRs, Census and then gradually the entire relevant contents of the local record office, numerous Oxford & Cambridge College muniments rooms, the British Library, Cambridge University Library etc etc anything relevant to Steeple Morden. My study wandered into the adjoining counties of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. I was fortunate, as although my job allowed little spare time it did pay well and I was able to employ archivists and record agents to copy and transcribe records for me. My study here at home has to be seen to be believed, the files, piles of boxes, map chest etc full of the copies of the original records and the extracted and reconstituted families. I was extracting all references for a particular surname by manual search and copying by hand and then reconstructing families on trees written by hand in ink! The photocopier seemed a marvellous invention and this was long before the days of digital CDs containing so many records. A few years ago I decided that I needed to explore computerisation, especially as I had researched my own family for even longer and wanted to turn all that into something more fitting the digital age. I was surprised with what I found, as the software approach to family history was so different to the manual way. All genealogical software seems to concentrate on adding individuals to "your family" and there is no way to first record all the references to your surname in the parish registers of parish X and then work through identifying and allocating individuals to their appropriate place within the family and on the tree. It seems a very different way of working. I was tempted to get something like Custodian to be the keeper of the records and then other software to be the family record and tree creator. After research I was attracted to Family Historian and enquired as you did "will it work well for a one place study?". I don't think anybody else is doing a one place study and understands the sheer mass of data you acquire, which needs recording until you are ready to analyse and use it, because I did not get any response that went to the heart of the challenge. If you wish to digitise the transcripts and copies you have etc, then I believe you do need something like Custodian or create your own database format. I have not gone any further with that aspect as yet. However, I did decide that FH was a very nifty if somewhat challenging piece of software to record and create family trees, with all the added information and images etc you might want hang onto individuals and trees. I did not mean that to read like a patronising putdown, I think highly of FH! So I bought FH and still feel I am in the early stages of converting to digital. So far it works well for me, but I am inputting families from my paper based reconstructed family files - I am not starting with a parish register transcript trying to reconstruct a family. I have come to the conclusion that there is not a better alternative out there for one place studies. You either embrace genealogical software as is or stick with pen and ink. One Place Studies are unlikely to ever be a market large enough to justify bespoke software. Jane and others did give me some good advice. Particularly, construct the entire one place study as one FH project, don't do a project per family. So I have two projects, one for my own and wife's families, which have no connection with Steeple Morden (except us) and another for Steeple Morden. As far as Steeple Morden goes, so far so good and the major benefit with this as a FH project is when I find new members for a family or realise that my original interpretation of a family is wrong, then a few button hits and clicks and minutes later the tree is redrawn and printable, without the intervention of pen and paper and sometimes hours of labour. Also the multiple inter-relationships are a pleasure to play with and redraw. Introducing my successor as Treasurer of the Village Hall Committee to the Chairman "John, this is Percy. You can trust him as he is your sixth cousin!" Their faces were priceless, as neither knew they were related to the other, even that remotely. I would give FH a go and see if it works for you. Perhaps thereafter we can share experiences. Regards Andrew Andrew J Pye Lovers of Blue & White Steeple Morden ROYSTON Hertfordshire SG8 0RN England Website www.blueandwhite.com Email andrew@blueandwhite.com Telephone >From UK 01763 853 800 >From USA/Canada 011 44 1763 853 800 >From Elsewhere +44 1763 853 800 Facsimile >From UK 01763 853 700 >From USA/Canada 011 44 1763 853 700 >From Elsewhere +44 1763 853 700 -----Original Message----- From: family-historian-users-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:family-historian-users-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Alexandra Coles Sent: 27 February 2012 23:59 To: family-historian-users@rootsweb.com Subject: [FHU] Using Family Historian for one place studies - Character set not allowed I run the One Place Studies website at http://www.one-place-studies.org/ and am undertaking a one place study myself. Is there anyone else on this list doing an OPS? I’m particularly interested to hear if/how you are using Family Historian for any part of your OPS. I had previously thought that traditional genealogy software wasn’t really appropriate to the task, but I am now wondering if some of the features of Family Historian could, in fact, be turned to the actual process of family reconstruction – for example having custom queries to help you identify where separate source records more than likely refer to the same individual, and using the Merge function to combine those previously discrete individuals into one individual. Are there other ways in which Family Historian could be used for an OPS? Alex in Auckland NZ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hi Andrew Lots of food for thought here. I think you are right that I should experiment a bit trying to take an OPS from raw data input in FH (probably using Ancestral Sources to generate the necessary individuals in a FH project from the census and parish register entries) through the matching and reconstructing process, and see how easy (or not) it is for both the working phase and the reporting phase. Thanks Alex ________________________________ From: Blue and White China Andrew Pye <andrew@blueandwhite.com> To: Alexandra Coles <ahcoles@yahoo.co.nz>; family-historian-users@rootsweb.com Sent: Thursday, 1 March 2012 9:44 AM Subject: RE: [FHU] Using Family Historian for one place studies - Character set not allowed Hi Alex I had been doing my family tree for years, when I embarked in 1978 on a one place study on Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire, England. I began with cards and paper and soon had transcripts of the PRs, Census and then gradually the entire relevant contents of the local record office, numerous Oxford & Cambridge College muniments rooms, the British Library, Cambridge University Library etc etc anything relevant to Steeple Morden. My study wandered into the adjoining counties of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. I was fortunate, as although my job allowed little spare time it did pay well and I was able to employ archivists and record agents to copy and transcribe records for me. My study here at home has to be seen to be believed, the files, piles of boxes, map chest etc full of the copies of the original records and the extracted and reconstituted families. I was extracting all references for a particular surname by manual search and copying by hand and then reconstructing families on trees written by hand in ink! The photocopier seemed a marvellous invention and this was long before the days of digital CDs containing so many records. A few years ago I decided that I needed to explore computerisation, especially as I had researched my own family for even longer and wanted to turn all that into something more fitting the digital age. I was surprised with what I found, as the software approach to family history was so different to the manual way. All genealogical software seems to concentrate on adding individuals to "your family" and there is no way to first record all the references to your surname in the parish registers of parish X and then work through identifying and allocating individuals to their appropriate place within the family and on the tree. It seems a very different way of working. I was tempted to get something like Custodian to be the keeper of the records and then other software to be the family record and tree creator. After research I was attracted to Family Historian and enquired as you did "will it work well for a one place study?". I don't think anybody else is doing a one place study and understands the sheer mass of data you acquire, which needs recording until you are ready to analyse and use it, because I did not get any response that went to the heart of the challenge. If you wish to digitise the transcripts and copies you have etc, then I believe you do need something like Custodian or create your own database format. I have not gone any further with that aspect as yet. However, I did decide that FH was a very nifty if somewhat challenging piece of software to record and create family trees, with all the added information and images etc you might want hang onto individuals and trees. I did not mean that to read like a patronising putdown, I think highly of FH! So I bought FH and still feel I am in the early stages of converting to digital. So far it works well for me, but I am inputting families from my paper based reconstructed family files - I am not starting with a parish register transcript trying to reconstruct a family. I have come to the conclusion that there is not a better alternative out there for one place studies. You either embrace genealogical software as is or stick with pen and ink. One Place Studies are unlikely to ever be a market large enough to justify bespoke software. Jane and others did give me some good advice. Particularly, construct the entire one place study as one FH project, don't do a project per family. So I have two projects, one for my own and wife's families, which have no connection with Steeple Morden (except us) and another for Steeple Morden. As far as Steeple Morden goes, so far so good and the major benefit with this as a FH project is when I find new members for a family or realise that my original interpretation  of a family is wrong, then a few button hits and clicks and minutes later the tree is redrawn and printable, without the intervention of pen and paper and sometimes hours of labour. Also the multiple inter-relationships are a pleasure to play with and redraw. Introducing my successor as Treasurer of the Village Hall Committee to the Chairman "John, this is Percy. You can trust him as he is your sixth cousin!" Their faces were priceless, as neither knew they were related to the other, even that remotely. I would give FH a go and see if it works for you. Perhaps thereafter we can share experiences. Regards Andrew Andrew J Pye Lovers of Blue & White Steeple Morden ROYSTON Hertfordshire SG8 0RN England Website www.blueandwhite.com Email andrew@blueandwhite.com Telephone From UK 01763 853 800 From USA/Canada 011 44 1763 853 800 From Elsewhere +44 1763 853 800 Facsimile From UK 01763 853 700 From USA/Canada 011 44 1763 853 700 From Elsewhere +44 1763 853 700 -----Original Message----- From: family-historian-users-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:family-historian-users-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Alexandra Coles Sent: 27 February 2012 23:59 To: family-historian-users@rootsweb.com Subject: [FHU] Using Family Historian for one place studies - Character set not allowed I run the One Place Studies website at http://www.one-place-studies.org/ and am undertaking a one place study myself. Is there anyone else on this list doing an OPS? I’m particularly interested to hear if/how you are using Family Historian for any part of your OPS. I had previously thought that traditional genealogy software wasn’t really appropriate to the task, but I am now wondering if some of the features of Family Historian could, in fact, be turned to the actual process of family reconstruction – for example having custom queries to help you identify where separate source records more than likely refer to the same individual, and using the Merge function to combine those previously discrete individuals into one individual. Are there other ways in which Family Historian could be used for an OPS? Alex in Auckland NZ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

<<snipped>> ... All genealogical software seems to concentrate on adding individuals to "your family" and there is no way to first record all the references to your surname in the parish registers of parish X and then work through identifying and allocating individuals to their appropriate place within the family and on the tree. ... <<snipped>> Actually, as far as FH goes, it's up to you which way round you do it. The way I work when doing occasional one-name-in-one-place reconstructions is to record the source(s) first, with the transcript in the "Text from Source" on the source record. No individuals yet. (I get the feeling lots of people create individuals first, with their facts, then create source records after. I _always_ create a source record first. Apart from anything, there's then no temptation to forget to indicate the source of something.) What happens next tends to depend on whether I can easily identify the contents of the source record to an individual already in the "database". If it can be identified, then I'll record the reason why it's who I think it is in the Note on the source record and add the fact. If there's no obvious candidate - or several - I'll create a new individual, with the facts justified by that source record. So, if I have a marriage of John Doe in Northwich, and it could be John Doe from Davenham or John Doe from Hartford, I'll create a 3rd individual named John Doe. This is useful where the Northwich John has other facts clearly linked to him. When I have enough evidence to "prove" that Northwich John is one of the others, then I'll document that "proof" in a separate note record, link it to one and merge the 2 John individuals. (That "proof" is a separate note record to enable its easy disconnection if the proof later turns out to be wrong. Unfortunately, splitting the facts off, if the proof is wrong, is trickier). What I'm not sure is how easy it is to use FH to "shuffle the cards" of the source records to see matches as, to be honest, I summarise the records in a spreadsheet and use filtering to find candidates there, not in FH. I've never used Custodian but was influenced by someone who said that there was no point in using it because, in essence, the crucial stuff was duplicated between Custodian and FH. Excel suffices for me. Adrian Bruce

Thanks to everyone who has commented in relation to using Family Historian for one-place studies. I'll be experimenting on this over the coming weeks and will report back. Alex in Auckland NZ