Place names

[bbousquet]

Greetings,

This is something that's been a thorn in my side ever since I started with genealogy research: how do you store/manage place names? My file mostly contains individuals who lived in New France and Acadia (usually with associated ancestors in France), with some branches ending up in the American colonies and then the United States.

My preferred way of storing place names usually involves using the name at the time the event took place. This quickly becomes difficult to manage, however - especially when dealing with genealogy software that doesn't enable you to group place names in some form of hierarchy.

Take, for instance, Quebec city:

- Up until the Treaty of Paris (10 Feb 1763), one could call it "Québec, Canada, Nouvelle-France"
- Up until the Constitutional Act (in effect on 26 Dec 1791), one could call it "Québec, Québec, British Empire(?)"
- Up until the Act of Union (10 Feb 1841), one could call it "Québec, Lower Canada, British Empire(?)"
- Up until the British North America Act (1 Jul 1867), one could call it "Québec, Canada East, British Empire(?)"
- From that point on, one could call it "Québec, Capitale-Nationale, Québec, Canada" (the second component being the modern region name

Mind you, that's 5 different place names for the same location - and I'm actually just sticking to the significant treaties/acts. The same applies to US towns and counties and, obviously, to European cities who are now in different *countries* due to wars or border changes.

What do you do about this?

[Bruce L Crockett]

The consideration on how to record place names is where would the records for a particular date be kept.

Example: I have a relative who was born in one county, and state, married in a second county, same state, and died in a third county, same state. The city was the same for all three occasions. This was in the United States.

In the US records are kept at a county level, generally, and where one would start research for a recording of the event.

Today's recordings can be at a county and state level due to the usage of computers, etc;

[bbousquet]

Nobody else? I mean, am I just too picky about managing place names?

Another example: my ex-father in law was born in Breslau, Germany before WWII. That city is now Wrocław, Poland. This is a somewhat simple case in which I used the city and country names from when the event took place.

As years and centuries go by, cities merge (and sometimes demerge), borders change, colonies gain independence, etc. There *has* to be a reliable way of handling this, although I'm not sure how without some built-in, hierarchical, timeline-based place management module.

...or maybe I'm just needlessly obsessing about this.

[theKiwi]

I "try" to use place names as they were at the time of the event, but at the same time I try for some consistency so that places do group together.

Obvious examples are that West Virginia didn't exist until 1863, so any events at places in what are now West Virginia are recorded as being in Virginia.

In Scotland the current county of East Lothian was called Haddingtonshire up until 1921, so events there before that date are recorded as being in Haddingtonshire, events after that date are in East Lothian.

This is a good example of why Reunion needs a much revved up places database that would allow the storing of notes and media items (photos etc) for each place, so you could then store notes in each place's record indicating the history of the place - changes in jurisdiction etc that have occurred throughout a place's history.

The Wishlist forum has had this raised in the past, and it wouldn't hurt raising it again in the future.

Roger

[martha]

Originally Posted by bbousquet

Nobody else? I mean, am I just too picky about managing place names?

Another example: my ex-father in law was born in Breslau, Germany before WWII. That city is now Wrocław, Poland. This is a somewhat simple case in which I used the city and country names from when the event took place.

As years and centuries go by, cities merge (and sometimes demerge), borders change, colonies gain independence, etc. There *has* to be a reliable way of handling this, although I'm not sure how without some built-in, hierarchical, timeline-based place management module.

...or maybe I'm just needlessly obsessing about this.

No, I would say it is a real problem. If you take some countries, for instance, their borders have changed; their sovereignty has changed and the names of the villages along with it...very complicated! I am thinking specifically of the three partitions of Poland, for instance, or Courland or Prussia which ceased to exist. Or Germany or Italia which only came into existence as united sovereign countries quite late in history.

Martha

[S McCormick]

Yes, it IS an important subject. "The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy" by Val D. Greenwood (I own the 3rd edition) states that the "genealogy of places" is as important as the genealogy of people. It gives an example of Jefferson, N. C. which has been in 7 different counties in the 100 years between 1700 and 1800. Unfortunately it doesn't suggest how you list the references to place in your work (at least as far as I could see). "Evidence Explained" did not mention this either. "The Genealogist's Companion and Source Book" by Emily Anne Croom mentions personal and place name changes as challenges, but doesn't mention what to do about them.

The 4th cousin who gave me such a head start on listing a part of my family I hadn't known about, listed things this way "Northumberland (now Union Co.), PA"; before I started entering this type of information, I "normalized" places to the modern location. I now realize that this is a mistake, but have not yet gone back to fix any entries of this type. Can we get Reunion to work with this type of entry. I'm thinking of color or typeface (which we would see but Reunion wouldn't react to. On color (or typeface) would designate original and the other modern. Then you could set up columns in you places list to show both, and could sort on either column. The color (typeface) would tell you whether you were working with old or modern names and the list would keep things pretty close together. NOTE I haven't tried this, but could it work?

Sue

[ljirwin42]

Originally Posted by bbousquet

Nobody else? I mean, am I just too picky about managing place names?

If by "picky" you mean precise, there's no such thing as too picky, U.S. counties, for example, were typically created out of earlier counties as population spread out and residents wanted county courts near where they lived. It's important to know the "genealogy" of the counties because records often remained with the earlier "parent" county. They may not exist for a township in the county of which it is now a part.

My work-around is a bit cumbersome but effective for me. Take as an example Lower Macungie Twp. in Pennsylvania. It was in Northampton Co. until 1812 when Lehigh Co. was created out of the southwestern part of Northampton. I have the following entries for Henry Christman:

Birth | 1777|Lower Macungie Twp., Northampton [after 1812 Lehigh] Co., Penn.
Death| 1854|Lower Macungie Twp., Lehigh Co., Penn.

It takes a little effort at first, but once two (or more) variations of a place name have been entered, Reunion's "Speed Names" function will remember both, and you just have to use the up-or-down arrow to select the one that fits the right time period. The resulting entry looks "picky", but it's not as cumbersome as traveling to Lehigh Co. to look for birth records that are actually in Northampton Co.

(BTW, I'm guilty of being picky when it comes to Germany. No such place existed as a political unit until 1871, so my data are full of the expression [now Germany] after place names like Pfalz, Bayern, Hannover, etc. But the picky addition of [now Germany] reminds me that the political map looked different to my ancestors and to the diligent "Beamten" who created all their records. Besides, what Prussian [now German] would accuse a researcher of being too "picky?")

Lee James Irwin
FamilyMatters Research

[bbousquet]

As was suggested to me, I created a new thread in the Wish List forum describing what I think would be a great addition to Reunion for managing places/locations (this briefly touches on a mapping component as well). Feel free to add to that thread as well.