FreeCEN2 can be searched at Sub-district and Parish Levels

[PatReynolds]

See also #466 - which might be used to cover both.

Is there an argument for replacing the search at Registration district level with a search at Sub district and/or Civil Parish level? That is what is done on FreeREG, and while it can be a little frustrating to have to wade through a large number of parishes, with the ‘nearby places’ enabled, it allows searching of quite a wide area. Or there could be a three-level search: select a county, the EDs appear. Select an ED, and it’s Civil Parishes appear (either for those parishes in the county, or just all of them). For this to work for the Bittons, selecting a county would then give you the EDs that included parts of that county although, hierarchically, they were in other counties…

[geoffj-FUG]

The structure of FreeCEN2 depends on the PARMS, which is in itself governed by the census administrative structures since 1841. The structure is County Registration District (or Hundred, Wapentake etc) Census Piece Civil Parish It is this structure that governs how FreeCEN can be searched. EDs are recorded within civil parishes and I suspect are too small for a researcher to recognise. A civil parish may have several EDs. I think that the implementation of searching around a civil parish might have resolved this story. It eliminates the issue of County borders. Geoff

[Captainkirkdawson]

@geoffj-FUG @PatReynolds Geoff your comment about the structure of the Freecen2 database is correct as far as it goes. However it is important to remember that Freecen2 actually searches by the Freecen2 Place (and its location as part of the Nearby Places option). Each of the database levels below the County link to a place in Freecen2 Place. VLD search records are populated with the piece level Freecen2 Place. CSV search records are populated with the civil parish Freecen2 Place. The Census search place drop down list of places is a list of Freecen2 Places that have search records. Hence it will either be at the Piece or Civil Parish level depending on the source of the transcription. This is why the Nearby Places option is so important

[geoffj-FUG]

We will be in a situation once the civil parish vld corrections are all done where we can implement this if it is still required.

The census place that we currently search on is the civil parish. Do we want to add the sub-district to this? We can do it using the PARMS as a reference. Ancestry searches go through several steps before you get to civil parish level and then allow you to progress and search on the ED.

The search levels could be Country, County, Registration District, Sub District (Piece), Civil Parish, ED in that order.

What level do we need to search to?

From Kirk's post above: Each of the database levels below the County link to a place in Freecen2 Place. VLD search records are populated with the piece level Freecen2 Place. CSV search records are populated with the civil parish Freecen2 Place.

I see this as a FreeCEN issue. I see Place of Birth searching as an issue that needs to be coordinated between FreeREG, FreeBMD and FreeCEN.

Geoff