For the L♥ve of our ancestors: Finding Records by Pulling Location Data

[Tracy Conger]

Hi.  I am a beginner programmer, avid genealogist/enthusiast and I'd like to jump in and help anyone who shares a similar vision.  Curretly I have a qustion.

I hope we can create suggestions on where to look for records that are specific for Chile.  The problem is found when I am researching the end of a line around early 1800's and I try to find a Chilean ancestor's birth record and the location was called something else.  it's common that locations as we know change.  Debbie Gunther helpe me see that Maipo was formerly El Ingenio.  

I thought of this a long time ago that if we can pull data from existing FamilySearch trees in order to harvest a statistical probability along with possible places to search for records then I believe we can generate a few thousand or even maybe 100,000 locations.  We can then take the data and see statistically that according to our information we have a defined probabilty of finding a town such as Maipo as actually correlated to El Ingenio.  Can we do this?  If so then it will be impressive to be able to this on a large scale for all of Chile and this way when I log into FamilySearch I will be able to automatically see some possible places (without having to acquire a gazateer which might have that information).  We could do so with a pop-up of probable places that people can peruse.  

Sometimes we might not have any clue what to put into Google, yet having such a pop-up on FamilySearch would increase the effectiveness of genealogical research.  How can this be done?  I'm not sure FamilySearch allows real data to be downloaded and where this is not private data perhaps we can find a way to get specific data examples of thousands of examples from people between the 1500's and the 1900's.

[Dallan Quass]

I'm trying to figure out how this would work. Are you thinking of looking for place co-occurrences patterns, where many individuals have events in both places?  Or are you thinking of something else?

By the way, instead of El Ingenio being renamed Mapio, it's possible that Maipo is the name of a district/municipality that encompasses El Ingenio.  Look at the URL structure of this page at Maplandia: http://www.maplandia.com/chile/cordillera/san-jode-de-maipo/el-ingenio/

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[Tracy Conger]

Yes, co-occurences patterns where individuals have events in both places.

You're right that El Ingenio could have been a district/municipality that encompassed El Ingenio.  I noticed in the geographical dictionary that Maipo's records going back in time can be found in El Ingenio.  That's right.  The pin showing on the google map indicates coordinates for El Ingenio.  I'm certain that El Ingenio included a region in which Maipo was a part of. 

 

For anyone studying the geography I would say that San Jose de Maipo is more to the East, but it has been hard to find any certain maps.  I searched the SLC FamilySearch Library's Chilean paper maps to no avail.  I looked in books with maps and it was something yet not very definitive (close up)--just found some big geographical jurisdictions such as Chile and Argentina how it was formerly for example.  Justin York mentioned in a competition for a former Roots Tech challenge that with a lot of work he determined that specific point locations were the way to go (such as shown by a pin in Google) rather than defining the endless plethora of boundary divisions for each changing municipality or locality.

 

I just happened to notice that when I actually looked in records and hit a dead end, consulted Sister Gunther, realized how to better utilize the FamilySearch Catalog and searching, and when I consulted the gazetteer I later found a possible lead to an image showing beyond the previously dead end.  So I figure that if 100 people find 10 generations all in Maipo and if we go through it all looking for co-occurrence patterns then it will be a possibly helpful hint that we could enable for the 101st person who may be confounded at his or her dead end.  I sure wish I had this option when I started 10 years ago and it's still not here available which means someone has to figure out a way to pull data from the family trees enabling the possibility of this feature.  I'd sure love to talk with someone or view online how this can be done. 

 

And let us remember, there is often, with work, a legitimate and cosher way around things.  I have a sense of faith that it can be done even though we need to see how.  I was told once that you can't pull data this way from existing trees (which was a statement with conditions and with context), but I think we might be able to get special permission to do so if there currently is no FamilySearch way to do it.

[Tracy Conger]

Thanks for your ineterest, Dallan.  I sometimes need polishing on my explanations--forgive me.  But please feel free to ask me questions.  I welcome your questions.  If we email directly we can get a better explanations to post here if any clarification is needed.

[Dallan Quass]

What if there were a service that would show, for a given county/district and decade, the frequency of other places listed in events for people living in that county/district in that decade, grouped by decade? Specifically, you could see the places where people living in county/district P during decade Y tended to live in Y-10, Y-20, Y+10, Y+20, etc.  And by summing over all decades, you could see all other places where people living in county/district P also lived.

Would this provides the place co-occurrence patterns you are looking for?  Would it be necessary to get finer-grained than county/district level and provide co-occurrence patterns at the city/town/village level?

Dallan

[Tracy Conger]

The essence of what you described is excellent and I think it's inspired.  Thank you!  Your description allows for the patterns categorized according to decades (or possibly significant times in history such as 1885 when the civil registry became operable), yet to provide the ability to actually acquire the names, dates, and places is the dilema.  

So you did a wonderful job describing the essence of step two.  It's helpful!  Now step 1 is to find a way to obtain these pieces of information from thousands of FamilySearch trees.  Can this be done today or is it something that is currently possibly available only in the future?  So the original question, now having context, should now be phrased as such:  "How can these places (such as Maipo, Region Metropolitana, Chile) become made public?"  It's really just seeing that someone's ancestor was from place x and their father is from place y.  Another such question of equal value is, "How can a list of thousands of places x and y be data mined from all Chileans who have accounts with FamilySearch?"