Introduction

This is a continuation of the series on the features that Centurial is missing, and this time, we’re going to talk about places. Now, as you know if you’ve used Centurial recently, it actually does have support for places, but unfortunately, they seem to be a bit of an afterthought.

I say that because places are essentially just a text field, and places are compared using exact text comparisons rather than having any kind of understanding that places, in general, are heirarchical (e.g. the town of Mineola is in Nassau County in New York State, in the United States of America, and so on). So when one source claims that someone was born in Mineola, NY, and another says they were born in New York, those claims are not in conflict, because Mineola, NY is just a more specific place — similar to name abbreviations.

If you’ve read the previous article then you’ll know we discussed places in the context of researcher interpretation of claims, as well. I still think that has a place (no pun intended), but that first-class place support would still be a huge value add.

First-class Place support

As of this writing, there are essentially three entity types in Centurial: Person, Event, and Relationship. Those are all pretty straightforward. What I propose is, essentially, adding Place as a fourth option to that list. That’s what I mean by “first-class” place support: take places from an attribute of other entities and turn them into entities all on their own. That means that we could record claims specifically about a place, for example.

Use Cases

Other tools, such as Family Tree Maker, Ancestry, and Family Search, all come with a list of places. Of those, Family Search’s seems to be the most versatile, as it understands that places come and go — borders and names change, for example. Other tools, in comparison, generally fall short.

Consider if we’re doing research in Virginia — depending on when in Virginia our research is centered, that could mean drastically different locations, geographically. For example, West Virginia only got separated out of Virginia in 1863¹, so if our research subject is in Charleston, VA in the early 1800s, some tools would require us to put Charleston, WV, since that is its modern geographical equivalent. Personally speaking, that leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, because from our research subject’s perspective, “West Virginia” was not a thing that existed — they were located in Virginia. There must, however, be some way for the software to understand that “Charleston, WV” post-1863 is the same place as “Charleston, VA” before that point.

With place claims, we can do that, depending on how they’re structured. For example, take the following claims regarding Charleston²:

1. 1788: Charleston is within Kanawha County
2. 1788: Kanawha County is within Virginia
3. 1863: West Virginia is established
4. 1863: Kanawha County is within West Virginia

Or at least, something along those lines.

In some sense, this is a bit of a tangent from the more general genealogical research that we’re used to doing, but in reality, the places our ancestors lived had a huge impact on their lives, and it is generally useful to increase our knowledge and understanding of those places to improve the quality of our research. Or rather: family history happens in the context of place history. And Centurial could give us the tools to make that happen for us.

As a side benefit, it would also add support to techniques like “one place studies.”³

Conclusion

Even if the idea of true, first-class place support doesn’t make it into Centurial someday, it’s clear that something needs to be done about places, even if it’s just better matching. With that said, I think it would be very useful to introduce structured claims about places, and who knows how that could improve our research down the line.