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CHAPTER 11 LISTS OF SIMILAR PERSONS, FAMILIES AND NOTES
OR
SEARCHING YOUR FOLDER FOR SPECIFIC INFORMATION
PART I: SIX DIFFERENT LISTS OF PLACE NAMES...
WHY PLACE NAMES?
The PLACES command creates up to six lists of places.
As you work with place lists, you'll find that they don't
really fit logically with the other lists that GIM LISTS can
create. For one thing, they can't be used in FROM commands
to make new lists, and for another, they can't be formatted
in any more than one way.
However, they are much too useful to do without, even though
they may feel a little out of place.
WHAT PLACE LISTS CAN IT CREATE?
The six place lists that can be created are:
1. A list of large place names in your folder, sorted
alphabetically
2. A list of large place names in your folder, sorted by
frequency
3. An outline list of place names in your folder
4. A permuted list of place names in your folder
5. A list of small place names in your folder, sorted
alphabetically
6. A list of small place names in your folder, sorted by
frequency
"Large" place names are, for example, "Ann Arbor, Washtenaw,
Michigan".
"Small" place names are, for example, "Ann Arbor",
"Washtenaw", and "Michigan".
The meanings of "permuted" and "outline" lists are easier to
see than to describe. There are examples of them below.
WHAT DO THE PLACE LISTS LOOK LIKE?
Let's take a small example. Let's say you have a small
folder, consisting entirely of places in Arizona.
To be specific, let's suppose that all of the people in your
folder come from one of these places:
Layton, Graham, Arizona
Mesa, Maricopa, Arizona
Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona
Pima, Graham, Arizona
Safford, Graham, Arizona
Smithville, Graham, Arizona
LARGE PLACES
In that case, enter the PLACES command, and your first list,
called "Large Place Names, Sorted Alphabetically", will look
like this:
Layton, Graham, Arizona
Mesa, Maricopa, Arizona
Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona
Pima, Graham, Arizona
Safford, Graham, Arizona
Smithville, Graham, Arizona
No big surprises, so far, right? You can probably predict
what the second list, called "Large Place Names, Sorted By
Frequency," will look like:
Count: 1 Layton, Graham, Arizona
Count: 1 Pima, Graham, Arizona
Count: 1 Safford, Graham, Arizona
Count: 1 Smithville, Graham, Arizona
Count: 2 Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona
Count: 3 Mesa, Maricopa, Arizona
What this means is that the first four places each occur
exactly once in the folder, and that Phoenix occurs exactly
twice, and Mesa occurs three times.
This DOESN'T necessarily mean that three separate persons
are from Mesa; it means that after gathering up everyone's
birth, christening, marriage, death, and burial places and
putting them all into one pot, three occurrences of Mesa,
Arizona were found. That could be from three people, or it
could be a single person who was born, christened, and died
there.
Note that this list is sorted by frequency. Where the
frequencies are the same, the list is sorted alphabetically.
SMALL PLACES
The two lists of small place names are similarly no big
surprise. The alphabetical list of small place names will
look like this:
Arizona
Graham
Layton
Maricopa
Mesa
Phoenix
Pima
Safford
Smithville
And the frequency list of small places will look like this:
Count: 1 Layton
Count: 1 Pima
Count: 1 Safford
Count: 1 Smithville
Count: 2 Phoenix
Count: 3 Mesa
Count: 4 Graham
Count: 5 Maricopa
Count: 9 Arizona
These four lists are valuable, useful lists for a number of
reasons, but the real power of the PLACES commands comes from
the other two lists. As we said earlier, the outline and
permuted lists of places are easier to see than to describe,
so let's show you what they look like with this example.
OUTLINE LIST OF PLACES
The outline list of places for our Arizona example will look
like this:
Arizona
Graham
Layton
Pima
Safford
Smithville
Maricopa
Phoenix
By itself, it doesn't look like much, perhaps, but it is
probably the most useful of all six lists.
For one thing, it organizes all of the place names in your
folder by country, state, county, city, parish -- even down
to the street address or cemetery block if you've entered
that information. A list like this is invaluable when you're
trying to verify the existence or the location of certain
places.
It's also an invaluable tool for spotlighting spelling
inconsistencies. Consider the following outline, taken from
actual folder data:
North Carolina
Forsyth
Winstom Salem
Winston Salem
Gillford
Greensboro
Guilford
High Point
From this, it's clear to see just by looking that "Winston
Salem" is misspelled somewhere in the folder, or it wouldn't
have shown up here twice. Using GIM LISTS to search for any
place that contains "Winstom Salem" will find it for you.
(In actual fact, both of these entries are misspelled; the
correct spelling is "Winston-Salem".)
It's also apparent that either "Gillford" or "Guilford" is
probably a misspelling. In fact, it's "Guilford" county, and
"Gillford" is a misspelling. Using GIM LISTS to search for
any place that contains "Gillford" and "North Carolina"
should spotlight that spelling mistake.
Here's another example from the same set of actual folder
data:
Idaho
Ada
Boise
Bingham
Goshen
Shelley
Taylor
Blackfoot
Bonneville
Idaho Falls
Idaho Falls
Idaho Falls
Kootnie
Catalda
From this example, it is clear that Idaho Falls is in the
wrong county somewhere. Either it's in Bonneville County,
Idaho, in which case the "Idaho Falls, Idaho Falls, Idaho"
place name is in error, or it's in Idaho Falls County, in
which case the "Idaho Falls, Bonneville, Idaho" entry is in
error. In fact, there is no Idaho Falls County, and so using
GIM LISTS to search for the erroneous place name should
quickly tell you where that inconsistency is.
From this example, it's also clear that Blackfoot, Idaho is
missing a county. Blackfoot, Idaho is in Bingham county, and
a quick search for "Blackfoot" should tell you where to go to
fix that.
PERMUTED LIST OF PLACES
The permuted list of places for our earlier Arizona example
will look like this:
Layton, Graham, Arizona
Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona
Pima, Graham, Arizona
Safford, Graham, Arizona
Smithville, Graham, Arizona
Layton, Graham, Arizona
Pima, Graham, Arizona
Safford, Graham, Arizona
Smithville, Graham, Arizona
Layton, Graham, Arizona
Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona
Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona
Pima, Graham, Arizona
Safford, Graham, Arizona
Smithville, Graham, Arizona
This may not look like much at first, until you realize that
it is a list of each of the small place names from the list
of small places sorted alphabetically, shown in context each
time each of the small place names appears in a large place
name.
As another example, the permuted list of places for our
earlier Idaho example would look like this:
Boise, Ada, Idaho
Goshen, Bingham, Idaho
Shelley, Bingham, Idaho
Taylor, Bingham, Idaho
Blackfoot, Idaho
Boise, Ada, Idaho
Idaho Falls, Bonneville, Idaho
Catalda, Kootnie, Idaho
Goshen, Bingham, Idaho
Blackfoot, Idaho
Boise, Ada, Idaho
Catalda, Kootnie, Idaho
Goshen, Bingham, Idaho
Idaho Falls, Bonneville, Idaho
Idaho Falls, Idaho Falls, Idaho
Shelley, Bingham, Idaho
Taylor, Bingham, Idaho
Idaho Falls, Bonneville, Idaho
Idaho Falls, Idaho Falls, Idaho
Catalda, Kootnie, Idaho
Shelley, Bingham, Idaho
Taylor, Bingham, Idaho
Note that Idaho Falls appears twice in the central column.
The first time it appears, it is part of the larger place
names associated with the small place name "Idaho". The
second time it appears, it is part of the large place names
associated with the small place name "Idaho Falls".
Like the outline list of places, the permuted list of places
is another way to organize place names. Either of these
methods can be helpful in identifying inconsistencies and
spelling errors, and either of them can be useful in
identifying and verifying the existence of place names. Your
personal preference will determine which of them you will
choose to use.