Place vs Address

Place vs Address

When entering facts and events, Pedigree Forge provides two separate location fields: Place and Address.

The Place field (labelled "in") should contain the town or village and county — the general locality of the event. The Address field should contain the specific address where the event took place.

For example, Charles Darwin died in the village of Down, Kent — that is the place. The specific address was "Down House". A baptism might list the parish church name in the address field when the town has more than one church.

This separation is important because Pedigree Forge uses the place field for matching, sorting, and map lookups, while the address provides additional detail for reports and transcripts.

Press F2 in the Address field to edit the address with its place shown alongside. The Similar Addresses tab lists the ways this address has already been written, so you can reuse one of them.

Tools > Address Assistant opens the same dialog on its own, with a place field of its own, for looking through the addresses in the file without first finding a record that uses one.

Tidying similar addresses

The same house is often written several ways over the years. To make them all read the same, open the Tidy Similar Addresses tab:

  1. Under Replace ticked with, enter the address and place to keep.
  2. Tick the forms to change. Select a row to see who uses it.
  3. Click Apply Changes.

Every ticked record is rewritten at once. Undo Last Change puts them back.

Tidying similar places

A place, too, is often written several ways: "Toxteth Park" beside "Toxteth", with and without the country, or a slip in the spelling. Click the map pin beside a place field and open the Tidy Similar Places tab. It lists the places that look like the selected one, and any place that shares an address with it.

  1. Under Replace ticked with, enter the place to keep.
  2. Tick the places to change. To move only some of a place’s addresses, open the place with the chevron and tick those instead. Select a row to see who uses it.
  3. Click Apply Changes.

Every record in a ticked place moves to the kept place, whatever its address. Undo Last Change puts them back.