User:Stangermerrill1

=  T HE DISTANCE CRITERION IN FAMILY HISTORY RESEARCH =

Before the Industrial Revolution the significant events of people's lives such as birth/christening, marriage and death/burial tended to occur in small geographic localities.

People of the past were like people of the present. They rarely stayed in one place all their lives. Depending on time period, topography, etc., travel was slow and costly. People frequently followed the easiest course and moved the shortest possible distance when purchasing property, establishing their trades and families, etc. For these reasons, locality is always an important consideration in family history research.

How do we know which communities were close to each other? What does "in the vicinity" mean in terms of family history research?

We can determine goegraphic proximity by compiling latitude and longitude for places where the events occurred, such as churches, and then calculating the distances between selected points.

In terms of family history research, the shorter the distance between two events, the more likely they are related.

What follows is a brief article for non-mathematicians who wish to learn how to use geographic coordinates to enhance the quality of their research. The article uses simple photographs and illustrations and instructions intended to give users understanding of latitude and longitude as applied to family research. It is not intended to be comprehensive.

Clicking on the following link will download the article to your computer. Once the article is downloaded, click on it to begin reading.

dl.dropbox.com/u/38435691/stanger.pdf