In genealogy property is often very important to establish a connectuion between generations.
Follow the property = follow lines of inheritance = discover family relationships.
Does anyone have a good method for this in Gramps? Should there be a property entity, just like there are people, sources etc?
It would be great if I could register the property, with sizes, neighbours and owners.
Any tips?
Eugene
If it is based on “land” property, there is already all you need. The property is in that case a location, a place. You can link individuals to a place by residence or by property. Both is supported by GEDCOM, too.
I use “Property” events with dates or date ranges (depending on what I know). For a farm, I draw the outline in Google Maps, save it as a KML file, and attach it in Gramps so that it will appear on the map.
There is also the “House Timeline” gramplet which shows the history of who lived at a given address.
Have you seen Domus house history project ?
Domus is a very intuitive tool by @DavidMStraub to establish the relationship between land properties and individuals.
Domus seems to be very interesting… Although in my case it will often involve small pieces of land with certain neighbours, often no precise location.
Those pieces might be split between children etc.
I don’t think places would work… Not every piece of land has a name. Most of the time it is recognisable because of size and neighbours.
And it probably would seriously mess up my places.
I have to think about this… Is there a possibility for different people to own the same property at different dates?
For example granddad owned property a from … till …
After this property a was owned by his eldest daughter from …
Is there a possibility to search properties by size or neighbours?
To show changing ownership, I guess you would need different events with different date ranges. Each event can be shared with the owners at that time, if there was more than one.
You could store the size of the property (for example, the acreage) in an attribute.
If you have stored your ancestor’s property and their neighbors property as places, if they are part of the same enclosing place (for example, a township or county) then they would appear near each other in the listing of places (as well as on the map).
You would probably need to create some custom filters, depending on how you store the data and how you want so search for it.
One other note about the House Timeline gramplet – I think it uses addresses rather than places.
Yes, you can add date ranges.
Are you sure about that? Land management is conducted very professionally in many countries. In Germany, there are highly precise cadaster registers. Even if a plot is only a few square meters, it has a “name”—a registry number. You cannot sell a piece of land without identifying it.
Yes I am sure. We have the kadaster in the Netherlands, but not in the 16th or 17th century, the time of my main research. When there are virtually no other sources, land ownership often is a link between generations and families.
It’s the same in France: we had something called ‘Land terrier’ before the 19th century (1809/1812), but the borders for areas (lands) were never always clear. Additionally, in Alsace-Moselle, there is a more accurate land book (livre foncier), inherited from local law (German Empire after 1871). This also includes specific transitions via a dedicated Prussian cadastre (1871/1884 or sometimes 1894, then 1918/1922).
So, like in the Netherlands, we have something like Bona vacantia (bien sans maître), which can be simplified as land without an owner. This also often means many vague descriptions or different customary names for the same area.