Are you struggling to extend your family lines or are you
trying to figure out how you're related to all of your DNA
matches? If you are not using consistent names of the
locations for the events that happens in your ancestors
lives, you might be creating roadblocks that don't need to
be there. In today's video, I'm going to discuss the reasons
why you want to be more consistent in the use of
location for the events such as birth, marriage, death,
residents, and so forth that appear in the profiles for your
ancestors, And then in upcoming videos, I'm going to show you
how to correct them quickly using genealogy software. Now,
if you're someone who finds that your inner grammar police
comes out when you're looking at writings and books and other
things that are written, you're probably going to identify for
the first reasons why inconsistent place names it's
problematic. It's because it looks grammatically ugly. When
you use O-H and O-H-I-O, without any rhyme or reason, it begins
to drive the inner grammarian crazy. Because they should be
consistent. So it is important that we clean up the places we
use and be consistent so we don't drive our family members,
who have that side of them or that we might have ourselves,
totally bonkers. The next reason that you want to clean
up place names is programs like FamilySearch, which is a free
online trees tends to tell you that you have a problem. And
no one likes to have red warning signs on their family profiles.
But when you use FamilySearch, you're going to see a problem
notice. And then when you look at it, it becomes
"unstandardized place names." And so, just like a grammarian wants
to have consistency, some platforms are trying to nudge
us towards consistent place name usage. And one of those
platforms for sure is FamilySearch. While the first two are
very similar to cleaning up your kitchen. And organizing
your pantry so that the cans are all together and turned the
same way. The third reason is that when you have inconsistent
place names, it makes it difficult for online genealogy
tools to be leveraged to give you more hints. Now, while some
of the platforms are trying to help you find entries for Baden
in their collections that connect with Germany. When you
aren't consistent in the places that you're using, it becomes
difficult to give you an automatic hint. For instance,
if I just say Houston, Texas, did you know there a Houston,
Harris County, Texas and there's a Houston County,
Texas? Well, you may know that. I know that but a computer
program won't know that. And so, we could be missing out on
reduced hint lists that are highly targeted on where we're
trying to research to climb our family tree. Along with hints,
various platforms have mapping tools. While some of them are
getting better, when you are inconsistent in where you
locate your ancestors birth or marriage or where they enlisted
to serve in the military, these programs have a hard time
putting your ancestors pinpoints on a map. And so you
can have pinpoints in the middle of Ohio, when you really
want it in a specific location in the lower southeast corner
of Franklin, Ohio. And so we want to be very specific in what
we're doing. And be consistent so all of our pins will start
being where we would like them to show up on a map. Now, let's
talk about DNA. A number of websites have tools that will
automatically compare your family tree that links to your
DNA to another family tree that's linked to your DNA
matches DNA. And what these automatic tools do is compare
the family trees based on potential shared ancestors from
their name, dates, and places and then provide you with
recommendations of who your common ancestors might be.
However, when you're inconsistent in the use of the
places that you put on your family tree, it makes it very
difficult to compare and align your family. A number of
platform forms are trying to accommodate all the variations
of towns, cities, states, countries, and so forth. But
what I found is that when I clean up my place list, I have
better results. I have more accurate results. But can you
imagine what it would be like if we all work to improve the
locations that are in our family trees? I an
confident things will progress more quickly because we're
comparing the same location. The other reason why we want to
clean up this part of our family tree is that we might be
creating genealogy roadblocks that don't need to be there.
How many times have you started looking in one location
thinking that that's where your ancestor lived only to discover
somebody misattributed a city to a state? That's what
accurate for incense. Did you know that there is a Paris,
Texas? Sometimes, I've seen in records where people said, "I'm
from Paris.: And then you begin researching in Paris, France.
That's not going to work out too well when your ancestors
are from Paris, Lamar County, Texas. And so we need to be very
consistent in how we put our place names. So, I know in a
number of family trees, I will see people just put a city. Or
they'll put the city and the state. But a number of states
will have the same city in multiple counties- vastly far
apart! And it becomes very confusing. So, I'm going to
invite you to work on being very consistent. You're going
to have the lowest geopolitical designation to the largest. How
about we say it this way? City, county, state or parish, and nation.
Now, cleaning up place names can be very very time consuming
and may make you want to pull your hair out. I know it did
for me. There are a number of tools that make this easier and
I will be showing you the different tools and how to use
them in upcoming videos. Be sure to check the description
box for the videos once they're released. I'll even put a
playlist there so you can just follow that playlist and you'll
see when new videos come out. Before we continue, if you agree
or disagree with any of the points that I have made so far,
or just want to share some of your frustrations, then leave a
comments below for others to learn from you. And continue the
discussion. But I want to take one quick moment to discuss
probably the most controversial part of being consistent with
your place name. Should you be historically accurate or should
you use modern place names? Now, one of my colleagues says,
"yes, I'm going to use modern place names. Because my family
members can't find that place on a map and I want my tree to
be for them." However, the other side of the coin is "I want to
be historically accurate for a number of different reasons."
First, when you're historically accurate, it helps you overcome
those genealogy roadblocks you put in your way by knowing
where the records were going to be held. Let's take Texas for
instance. If the event took place during the United States,
then chances are the records are in the county, state, or
US Federal Archive. But what about the Republic of
Texas? Well thankfully most of those archives are in Austin.
But what about when Texas was part of Mexico? Then the
records are probably going to be in the Mexican archive
somewhere. Well what about when Texas was part of Spain or
France? There were six flags Over Texas so it is important
to know the location historically accurate names so
you know where to find records. The other thing that I found
particularly beneficial is that when you have the historically
accurate name, it helps you understand the push and pull
factors that might have triggered various actions your
ancestors took. There could be hopping across the state line
to get married. They could be migrating to another location
or it could be staying in the same place and having the name
change multiple times. Understanding the historical
context in which your ancestor lives can help you understand
more about their ancestors lives. So yes, I come down on the
side of historical accuracy. But then I run into a problem. Every
platform is different. And then, when it comes to the United
States, well, the United States was formed in 1776 or
thereafter, depending on which date you're going to use for
the start of the country. But when it comes to the United
States, well, Ancestry and Family Tree Maker wants you to
always use USA. FamilySearch wants you to use United States.
So, which one do you use? And other platforms use United
States of America because of Estados Unidos de Mexico. It is the
United States of Mexico. So, saying United States kind of
makes a number of my Mexican colleagues really frustrated.
Well, I'm going to invite you to decide for yourself whether
you're going to use historical place names or modern place
names. Or if you're going to use USA or United States. The one
thing I invite you to do is just be consistent. When you're
consistent, then you create less confusion for yourself as
well as other researchers. You can overcome a number of
genealogy roadblocks, make your reports look good, and then
possibly figure out how you're related to all of those DNA
matches. I hope you'll see the value of being consistent in
cleaning up this one frustrating part of your family
tree. But I don't want you to be frustrated which is why I will
have the playlist of cleaning up the place names right here
soon as the videos all come out.