My ancestors seem to move around a lot, which is why I love Legacy's Migration Mapping so much. But what about those ancestors who live in the same house – for generations? One of our Legacy users, Chris, asked about this and got me thinking. Here's what he asked,
"My family has a history of living in the same house or same street for several generations. It would be great to get a report of everyone who has lived at the same address – is this possible?"
Yes, this is possible. It just depends on where you enter the information about the address.
First…below is a Residence event I created for Joshua Brown. From a city directory, I learned that he resided at 203 2nd Avenue in Minneapolis. I entered the transcription of the directory in the event's notes.
If I am consistent in entering addresses in an event's notes, then I can use Legacy's searching tools to see if anyone else resided at the same address. Here's how:
1) Go to Search > Find > Detailed Search.
2) Enter the conditions below and click the Create List button (click on image to enlarge):
In this case, Joshua was the only result:
But if others had the same address entered in an event's notes, they would show up in the list.
Second…another place to record an address is on the Address screen. Wherever you see the icon below, click on it and enter the address.
This icon is available at the Individual level (just click on it in the Family View) so you can record the current address of a living relative. It is available in a custom event, like I showed above. If I were to add the address to Joshua's residence event, the form would look like this:
Notice how I entered the name, "Home at 203 2nd Ave S in Minneapolis, Minnesota". Entering it this way would permit me to select this same entry for anyone else who lived here. Next, click on the Address List button and you can see the map of the home.
Here's the key. To see if anyone else in your Legacy family file has lived at the same address, click on the Show List button.
These techniques work well if you are consistent in how you type the addresses. And I suppose this article would be better if I had an example where several generations did in fact live at the same address.
Third…some will enter the address in the location field. Although I don't personally recommend or use this format (messes up the consistency of my master locations), here's what it would look like.
Then, clicking on the blue arrow to the right of the place, which pulls up the master location list, you can click on the Show List button to get a list of everyone who shares the same place.
So there's a few ideas for you. Hopefully something resonates for you Chris. What about others, how do you record the residence of an ancestor?
I have always recorded an address using the Description Field under Events. Fo Example if an ancestor lived at 23 London Road, Slough, Berkshire I would type 23 London Road in the Description Field then Slough Berkshire in the Place Field. Notes Field I use for any additional information, eg type of property, number of rooms etc etc.
It is then easy to do a search with the search menu using Individual>Event-Description>Contains>”London Road”.
Using this means if a relative lived next door at say 25 or the street was renumbered etc all references to London Road appear in the Search results and it is easy to see related individuals at he address you are concerned with.