Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:
It's Saturday Night again -
time for some more Genealogy Fun!!
Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):
1) Go into your Genealogy Management Program (GMP; either software on your computer, or an online family tree) and figure out how to Count how many places (e.g., towns, counties, states, countries) you have in your family tree database.
2) Tell us which GMP you're using and how you did this task.
3) Tell us how many place names are in your database and, if possible, which Place has the most entries. If this excites you, tell us which surnames are in the top 5! Or 10!! Or 20!!!
4) Write about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a status or comment on Facebook, or in Google Plus Stream post.
NOTE: If you can't figure out how to do this in your GMP (Genealogy Management Program), use the Help button and search for "count places" then follow directions.
Here's mine:
I was going to use RootsMagic 7 because that's where I'm doing my current additions, deletions and editing and is my most up-to-date collection. In RootsMagic 7, go to Reports, then Lists and scroll down to "Place List." Well, that didn't work - after a long time, I got a report with over 3,000 pages...and I couldn't see the contents. But I asked for all of the events...big mistake I think. When I asked for just a list of places I got 204 pages of alphabetical places, but no statistics. Drat. A look at File > Properties told me I had 9,385 place names but didn't break it down any further. I looked in the Help file for [place list statistics] and received no useful articles.
So I made a GEDCOM file and imported it into Legacy Family Tree which has a lot of file statistics. Here is a screen shot of the Family File Statistics with the Location Count:
I have 8,596 unique place names on my list (which does not include place details like cemeteries or residences). The top 10 are:
1. England - 1,716 events
2. Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States - 1,484 events
3. Massachusetts, United States - 1,459 events
4. New York, United States - 1,428 events
5. Eastham, Barnstable, Massachusetts, United States - 1,303 events
6. Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States - 1,124 events
7. Roxbury, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States - 1,072 events
8. Woodbridge, Middlesex, New Jersey, United States - 1,037 events
9. Medfield, Norfolk, Massachusetts, United States - 995 events
I don't know why it didn't give me 10, or let me ask for more. I'm not a Legacy expert, but I love their statistics!
I also don't know why the Legacy Family Tree number of place names is different from the overall number of place names in RootsMagic. It may have something to do with place details or unused place names.
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Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver
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