---
title: Places, Households and Surnames
description: "## The place hierarchy The studied place is the root. Beneath it the **Places** screen lets you add streets, areas, properties, institutions, cemeteries, churches, schools, inns, farms, mills and other places, each within a parent. Two places may share a…"
url: "https://www.ancestorpress.com/docs/ops-places-households-surnames/"
updated: "2026-09-11"
category: "AncestorPress One-Place Studies"
---

# Places, Households and Surnames

## The place hierarchy

The studied place is the root. Beneath it the **Places** screen lets you add streets, areas, properties, institutions, cemeteries, churches, schools, inns, farms, mills and other places, each within a parent. Two places may share a label under different parents - two High Streets in two hamlets are two places. Each place can carry boundary notes and an external map link, and gets its own public page listing every record at that place in date order.

## Resolving recorded places

Records carry the place string exactly as the source gave it. On the Places screen the recorded strings are listed with their counts; assigning a string to a place in the hierarchy points every record with that exact string at it. The recorded string itself is never changed.

## Households

Within a census record set, records sharing a household reference form a household. The public **Households** page lists each census record set, then its households with the head of household and member count, then the members of one household in schedule order. A household is the unit that makes a place study more than a list of names: who lived with whom, in which dwelling, over time.

## Surnames and spelling grouping

The **Surnames** screen lists every surname spelling in the study with its count. Where several spellings are one name - Smith, Smyth, Smythe - enter the name to group them as, and the public surname index shows one entry with the spellings listed beside it. The grouping is a tag on the records; the recorded spellings stay exactly as they are.