Name & Place at RootsTech, Salt Lake City, February 2020

Wednesday, 26th Feb 2020 saw the launch of Name & Place, the innovative cloud database and mapping software. It was perhaps befitting that the launch took place in Salt Lake City, Utah where RootsTech, the world’s largest family history event was meeting to celebrate its tenth anniversary.

Name & Place, developed by Paul Carter, meets a need to manage research projects with a scope outside of traditional family history; the One-Place Study , One-Name Study, Local History Project or House History.

In contrast to the key assumption shared by family tree software, that the research subjects are related through birth or marriage, Name & Place empowers the researcher to define the scope of their project, whether the people simply lived, worked or were buried in the same place or just shared a common surname. A spreadsheet, the typical alternative explored by such researchers, lends itself well to structured data entry but fails quickly when attempting to layer multiple datasets and analyse results.

Name & Place’s unique ability to integrate names, places and sources through record linkage opens up a world of examining research data at a holistic level before drilling down to each event or fact. Names and places interact, through the source record, the common glue of research. Each name, place, event and fact may be captured, and the individual records automatically updated.

By defining a location for each place within the project, powerful mapping analysis becomes possible, tracking migration patterns or population changes throughout your research. Layer photographs and documents, linked to a name, place or source, and your project comes to life with colour and context. As a cloud-based solution, each Name & Place project comes with a dedicated web page, enabling you to promote your project to the online world with the aim of interacting with interested parties.

Your project’s scope is constrained solely by your requirements. Research of a graveyard or war memorial is as managed equally as well as a ship history, a DNA study or a worldwide surname project. Whatever the focus of your project, you will find Name & Place intuitive, powerful and above all, specifically designed to fit your research needs.

See how Name & Place can help your research. A free two-week evaluation copy is available when you register at www.nameandplace.com.

Family Historians study the biography of an ancestor using records of birth, marriage, death, census and wills to compile a pedigree.

A One-Place Study however, looks holistically at a place that may or may not include researching a particular family. These traditional family history records are made all the more enjoyable by producing outcomes such as population statistics and establishing why people migrated in and out of the village. Occupational trends highlight why some trades flourished and others declined. Family and local history research working alongside each other, constitutes a more complete analysis.

House history includes property deeds – the scope of the land and property, architecture and usage together with the names of the owners over many years. Legislation such as the Hearth Tax, Land Tax and Window Tax generated additional records for consideration.

Vestry meetings were like a local parliament and if records are available, they can contain such fascinating details such as who paid into the parish rates and who received poor relief.

Maps are invaluable for illustrating the development of a community and its evolving topography through time. Enclosure, tithe and OS maps supported by the use of old postcards and photographs can help identify the likely time a building was erected, extended and demolished. Comparing old and current postcards is a brilliant game of ‘spot the difference’ over the decades.

Newspaper articles and parish magazines are a wonderful resource to better understand the day-to-day life of a community, the former including all the scandal.

Oral history captures memories and reminiscences from living inhabitants.

Researchers often need to tackle a section of work in bite-sized chunks to avoid becoming overwhelmed by all the information. So, if the question is “How can I manage my vast and varied One-Place or One-Name Study data?” Name & Place is the answer.