FAQ Links Individuals Surnames
The emphasis of the People & Places genealogical database is on the relationships between individuals, rather than the details of individual life stories. Therefore, most of the individuals have the minimum of data necessary to identify and individual. This consists of their date and place of birth, date and place of death and date and place of marriages. If you want further details of an individuals life, search further in other sources.
The People & Places genealogical database contains over 400,000 individuals, in over 160,000 families. The data was drawn from many hundreds of public, private and personal sources. Then the data was normalized, to approach a common format, combined, duplicates merged and thousands of unlinked fragments removed to arrive at the current state.
In the process of building the People & Places database, several benefits accrued.
| As duplicates were identified and merged, hundreds of families were reconstructed, and many previously unknown relationships were uncovered. |
| It was necessary to standardize the places listing for events to save confusion and space. Many of the events listed have revised place information that includes county and state. |
| When hundreds of databases are combined the sheer volume of information can produce some strange results. Many of the databases had pedigree lines going back 20, or more generations. With a large number of lines the relationships begin to merge into new patterns and ancient genealogy begins to exhibit familiar patterns. |
I have used certain formatting conventions to present the data.
| Names prior to the year 1400 follow the convention of given name only. Surname's came into use about this time in most of Europe. Prior to this, tracking and individual, or finding a duplicate in the database was as much a matter of chance, as skill, because a persons title could change several times throughout their life (owner of an estate, to count of a town, to duke of a region, or king of a country). This same change occurred about 1800 in Scandinavia. |
| Likewise, the use of middle name came into popular use about 1800. |
| Because of the limited space available in the name suffix field, only the highest known title is listed. |
| The data pages are a hybrid of family sheets and the pedigree tree from conventional individual sheets. I feel this better uses the capabilities of the computer format and gives the user a broader view of the relationships represented. |