* Place names - counties corporate

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Peter Collier
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Place names - counties corporate

Post by Peter Collier »

Having moved over from FTM to FH, I am now in the process of a big data clean up and I am trying to bring some consistency into how I handle place names.

I have many ancestors from Gloucester, which until 1974 was a county corporate (i.e. the city was a county in and of itself and administered separately (de jure, if not de facto) from the rest of Gloucestershire. I also have relatives from Bristol, Worcester, and London (City), which were similar entities.

My desire is to use the historically correct place name whenever possible, using the modern name as the standardised place name if necessary for the geocoding. So, as the standardised place name for Gloucester, or for any events in that city after 01.04.1974, I use "Gloucester, Gloucestershire, , UK" (my wife's half of the tree is American, so I have to keep a blank third field in all UK places). For events before 74 I see a couple of approaches:

* Record Gloucester in both the city and the county fields: "Gloucester, Gloucester, , UK". This is the closest to the legal form, "City and County of Gloucester", but it looks a bit absurd in reports etc.
* Record Gloucester as if it were a "county-free" city: "Gloucester, , , UK". Not strictly accurate, but it has the benefit of reading better in reports.

Obviously, "UK" only appears in historical place names from 1801. It's "England" before 1707, and "Great Britain" between then until 1801.

Any thoughts? Has anyone else had similar ponderings, or am I just scaling new heights of pedantry in an over-zealous quest for historically accurate adminstrative and constitutional order!? :roll:
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by tatewise »

One of the topics in how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers is glossary:places|> Places and Addresses that lists many Forum Posts on Places and Addresses.

Your quest is not new, and it has been discussed before, sometimes at some length.

I recall the similar case of Bristol discussed in Place/Address (12100).

BTW: Instead of UK why not use England in all cases along with Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by Peter Collier »

Thanks for the pointer - I did quickly peruse the archive, but there's too much to read it all in full, so it's good to have someone with a long and active presence on the forum who can recall when such things have cropped up before.

As to the whole of the UK vs E/I/S/W thing, the honest truth is I have gone back and forth a few times on it myself and I am only every partially satisfied with whichever I opt for.

On the one hand, the four nations are well defined and understood, their borders have been (more or less) stable for centuries, and choosing UK complicates things because then you must then also have the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland for dates between the first and second unions, as well as England, Scotland and Ireland as separate Kingdoms before 1707. And that's without even getting into the pickle of the various forms of Commonwealth and Protectorate states that we had on these islands for a while (if you REALLY want to split hairs!).

On the other hand, UK is the only correct name for the country that now exists. There has not been a country (in the constitutional sense) called England for 308 years, as both it and Scotland were extinguished in 1707. Scotland has since been semi-resurrected of course, as has Wales but, technically speaking, England is nothing more than a historical name for the part of the UK without a devolved government. Given that that it is the case, why agonise then over accuracy of the town and the county, only to give up and go "close enough" when we get to the country?

The reason I ultimately went down the UK rather than the four Kingdoms route is that my tree is not confined to the British Isles and I need a scheme that can cover the full reach of my tree without sacrificing consistency. My wife is American, and a big chunk of her ancestors of Dutch and English origin have been over in New England since the 1620s-50s. You really can't put USA for anything on the other side of the pond before 1776 -- it's just WRONG -- but if I'm having to record that so-and-so was born in 1635 in the Province of New York, or in Plymouth Colony on the one hand, I cannot then on the other record that I was born in 1974 in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England when in fact I was born in Birmingham, West Midlands, UK. Come to think of it, if you are going for historical names, where do you even draw the line? The part of Birmingham I was born in had been a village in northern Worcestershire until 1911. The part of the city I grew up in, a 20 minute walk away, was a Staffordshire village until 1891. If you don't use the place that existed at the time of an event, how do you then pick which "wrong" place is the "right" one to use?
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by tatewise »

FYI: TNA ~ 1939 Register says the 1939 Register (and the 1931 Census) were for England and Wales and 1939 Register was NOT for Scotland, Channel Islands, Isle of Man, or Northern Ireland.

GEDCOM says Place holds the "The jurisdictional name..." NOT the constitutional name.

You could use America before 1776 and USA thereafter.

The way I deal with it is a bit unusual.
Place holds the jurisdictional town, county, and country at the time of the event.
Address holds the building details plus the modern town, county, and postcode.

Since FH V6 the Place records now allow me to move the Address town, county, and postcode parts into the Standardised field.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by AdrianBruce »

Bear in mind that a county corporate was not a full-blown county. So far as I know, the Post Office didn't regard the counties corporate (or the later post-1888 county boroughs) as addresses - the county borough of Wigan was still in Lancashire to them. (Though I'm not sure where they thought Bristol was - I have a vague idea the PO was responsible for "Bristol, Somerset" as an address?)

So, given that references to the "correct" county immediately beg the question "Correct for which particular purpose?", I think it really is up to the user to come up with something meaningful according to their own criteria. As you say, "Bristol, Bristol" looks odd... ("So good they named it twice....". Oh hang on, that's the other side of the Pond). And a county-less Bristol gives the wrong idea.

Personally, I assign all my British places to the "Historic County" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic_ ... of_England), which has the advantage of not changing through history, and my 3G GF is going to have to cope with the idea that he lived in "Bristol, Gloucestershire". Having said that, I don't have a lot of places that change "county" over the years - I'm quite prepared to believe that if someone was brought up in "Widnes, Cheshire", then "Widnes, Lancashire" might feel odd to them.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by BillH »

I find using America to be a little too vague. Since all of North, Central, and South America are "America". I know people from the USA often refer to our country as America, but that is just an abbreviation for United States of America. Probably not a good name to use in genealogy.

I personally use British Colonies for dates prior to July 4, 1776. Another name that I see used occasionally is British Colonial America.

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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by Peter Collier »

@ Mike
But then there is no jurisdiction called England. For the purposes of law there is "England and Wales", which is of course a remnant of the old Kingdom of England (which included Wales) because the English and Scottish legal systems have never been unified. With regard to administration/jurisdiction though (and counties are units of such) then within what everyone understands to be England there is the United Kingdom and there are counties. Nothing in between. Which is not to say England should not be used of course -- it would be foolish not to when it suits --, only that, if you were to insist strictly on using only a jurisdiction, England would not fit that description.

Likewise America is a continent not a country (albeit, granted, we do use "America" now as a short-form alternative to USA). But the various pre-independence provinces and colonies there have a pretty clear history, so it'e easy enough to figure out which one to use.

It's a fascinating subject and I could cheerfully discuss it all at length, but the top-level field is not an issue. It's the muddle in the middle with places like Gloucester or the City of London I'm wondering about.

There is no absolute right answer, of course -- hence my sounding out other people here to see what their thoughts are.

@Adrian
The counties corporate were originally separate counties (in the sense of rights and privileges), but I believe a lot of that got gradually eroded over time with the poor laws and so on, until following the creation of the administrative counties in 1888 they were either made county boroughs (if they were to remain self-governing) or else merged administratively into the surrounding county while retaining their separate lieutenancies (= legal identities). In the administrative county of Gloucestershire, for example, I think the Lord Lieutenant was referred to as the "Lord Lieutenant of the County of Gloucestershire & The City and County of Gloucester & the City and County of Bristol", or some other mouthful along those lines.

The Royal Mail just confused things even more when they brought in "postal counties" (yes, they put Bristol in Somerset), but at the end of the day they were just routing instructions for mail distribution and nothing of import.

My instinct would be to use the historic counties too, and it works well in rural areas or for towns in the middle of their counties. The problem with that though -- using Birmingham as the example with which I am most familiar -- is that as industrial cities on the edge of ancient counties grew and absorbed surrounding areas, their administrative counties were adjusted accordingly (as one would of course expect). Consequently, the ancient Saxon divisions are lost within these urban areas. When the only reference on documents is to the city, Birmingham, or to the administrative county, Warwickshire, then it can be very hard to determine whether a particular street was originally part of Warwickshire, Worcestershire, or Staffordshire because the original field, or hedgerow, or stream that marked the boundary was paved over 200 years ago. More than half of what we now consider Birmingham wasn't ever in Warwickshire until it was absorbed by the city (see http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol7/pp1-3).

Ironically, to my mind, the shires were first created by the Saxons to be rational administrative units and they adapted them as required to suit their needs. But because the government in the 19th century overlaid a new set of administrative units on top of the old, rather than just modernising the existing, we have the the confusion we have now. I got into a great discussion once with a staunch advocate of the historic counties, who felt Saxon administrative boundaries had to remain inviolate 1200 years later even when they clearly no longer served as any point of reference in urban areas that had "transferred" to another county a hundred years previously. Many people in Birmingham would readily agree that they were in Warwickshire, not the "West Midlands", but tell anyone living in the half of the city immediately south or east of what is now considered the city centre that they are in fact in north Worcestershire and they will look at you like you have gone soft in the head. Worcestershire, they will tell you, is a rural county and it starts 10 miles down the road on the other side of the Lickey Hills.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by AdrianBruce »

Peter Collier wrote: ... There is no absolute right answer, of course ....
Absolutely - it's just that I get interested in the logical challenge!
Peter Collier wrote:... the top-level field is not an issue. ...
Mmm - I'm not sure. I'm trying to work with "East London, Cape Colony" at the moment, as there was no such administrative concept as "South Africa" at that time, it looks suitably different, and I've no idea if "South Africa" meant anything at the time other than a fairly general concept equivalent to "southern Africa" today. But I gave up trying to exclude "Australia" from "Victoria, Australia" as there seem too many localities called "Victoria". And as for Upper and Lower Canada - there, the contemporary names just confuse anyone from outside.
Peter Collier wrote: ... tell anyone living in the half of [Birmingham] immediately south or east of what is now considered the city centre that they are in fact in north Worcestershire and they will look at you like you have gone soft in the head. Worcestershire, they will tell you, is a rural county and it starts 10 miles down the road on the other side of the Lickey Hills.
Yes, that's my concern. :) My Historic Counties don't cause me anomalies but I can see that other people might indeed end up with oddities. In the end, I suspect we have to muddle along trying to be consistent but breaking it for pragmatic reasons of clarity.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by Peter Collier »

AdrianBruce wrote:
Mmm - I'm not sure. I'm trying to work with "East London, Cape Colony" at the moment, as there was no such administrative concept as "South Africa" at that time, it looks suitably different, and I've no idea if "South Africa" meant anything at the time other than a fairly general concept equivalent to "southern Africa" today. But I gave up trying to exclude "Australia" from "Victoria, Australia" as there seem too many localities called "Victoria". And as for Upper and Lower Canada - there, the contemporary names just confuse anyone from outside.
I think you're probably right about SA meaning nothing specific before the Union in 1910. Cape Colony looks fine to me, or if you want the official name it would be "Cape of Good Hope". I guess Victoria is a little trickier, although are there any other top-level places by that name? Mind you, it was all New South Wales before the 1850s.

I've often wondered why they went for "New South Wales" rather than just "New Wales". Maybe it was named by someone who had had a bad holiday once in Rhyl?

Keeping track of where is where in pre-Confederation Canada is a nightmare. Everything being joined together, split apart, joined back together again, expanded, renamed... I have a few relations out there (from the same branch of the family that also moved to Australia -- I guess they didn't get on) so I had to try and digest a bit of Canadian history a few years back to keep on top of it all. Fascinating stuff, but awfully convoluted.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by AdrianBruce »

Peter Collier wrote:... Canadian history ... Fascinating stuff, but awfully convoluted.
Yes - I found out earlier today that two bits of what is now Canada, were once, a long time ago and far away, part of a version of Massachusetts. :?
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by Peter Collier »

AdrianBruce wrote:
Yes - I found out earlier today that two bits of what is now Canada, were once, a long time ago and far away, part of a version of Massachusetts. :?
Go back to the very early days and the earliest colonial grants and charters were 'sea-to-sea'. Theoretically, Massachusetts, Virgina et al had a Pacific coastline as well as an Atlantic one. Even worse, the grants/charters all overlapped. I don't think that will ever trouble us though: even the most intrepid got but a few miles from the east coast back then.

Anyway, returning to the original drift of the thread, it occurred to me that in addition to "Gloucester, Gloucester, , UK" and "Gloucester, , , UK", one could also use " , Gloucester, , UK" with the city in second (i.e. county) place with a blank first field. I don't like that much, but it's worth mentioning for the sake of completeness.

At the moment though I'm tempted to go in yet another direction, and expand the county name a bit, so I have "Gloucester, City & County of Gloucester, , UK". It's not ideal, but it parallels what appears on some of my documents ("Gloucester in the City and County of Gloucester"), and avoids both the blank fields problem and the cheese problem (double gloucester...). I could probably extend that scheme to London too. Using "[ward], City of London, , UK" for places in the Square Mile and "[borough], County of London, , UK" for places in LCC area eliminates any ambiguity.

Seemingly, most of my ancestors liked to live in places with complicated and/or frequently changing administrations.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by AnneEast »

Personally I would use Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England. Have just gone through all my places and 'forced' them into three columns. Right or wrong, it suits me and seems to have satisfied Ancestry, which is why I needed to tidy them up.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by AdrianBruce »

A linked question with tongue in cheek - for those of us who claim our UK place-names are "settlement, county, country" - what do we do with unitary authorities? Do we treat them as similar to counties corporate?

Such as "Warrington, Lancashire, England" up to 1974; "Warrington, Cheshire, England" up to 1998 when it became a unitary authority, then "Warrington, Warrington Borough, England"????? :?

NB - the unitary authority of Warrington Borough covers more than the old town of Warrington.

Personally, it's "Warrington, Lancashire, England" throughout for me, but as I explained, I don't have many people in such peripatetic places....
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by jimlad68 »

Adrian, not so much tongue in cheek, a good point. You may have noticed many posts on this, my current thinking (always ready for a change and I have come to the conclusion there is no perfect answer) is to use the current address (I tend to use Wiki to get authorities etc) and use a Source to give historic info. 2 main reasons for this, although as boundaries change, they would need amendment.

1. A single location can have had many "addresses" over time, so a source could give more detail, including history, geography etc. The downside is that for exporting purposes you need to attach the source to every fact that uses the PLACe. (It would be easier, but less flexible) to use the FH "PLACE note" entry, but it does not export well and currently FH does not report FH "PLACE notes" very well). You don't need a source for every address, sometimes just for a Street, and mostly not at all if the address is still current and you have no extra "Source" info.

2. It makes geo locations etc more effective with in particular google maps and when exported.
see Best format of PLACe and ADDRess for Map Geocoding (11937)
post by jimlad68 » 03 Jan 2015 02:27
and extra info Addresses - Suggestion for Best Practice (12965) for more detail.

However, I'm sure like many others I have a mix of methods I have tried over the years that need "tidying up"/ consolidating etc.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by Peter Collier »

@Adrian

If you want to use current administrative areas, then the legal position of the unitary authority areas in England is that they are non-metropolitan counties, although -- go figure -- their councils are non-metropolitan district councils (i.e. the unitary authority is a county comprising a single district, with one district council and no county council).

The situation in Berkshire is the exception to the rule, in that old administrative county was not abolished as that would have extinguished it's "Royal" title. The unitary authority areas within Berkshire are therefore non-metropolitan districts. It's a legal technicality, the end result is to all intents and purposes the same.

Similar to Berkshire, when the metropolitan county councils were abolished 30-odd years ago, the administrative counties were not. The various cities and boroughs in these areas are therefore all metropolitan districts. The same happened in London when the GLC was abolished. The various London boroughs are therefore all within the County of Greater London. The City of London however remains a separate county.

So, in England at least, if you are using administrative geography, then the unitary authority goes in the county field, unless the UA is within Berkshire, Greater London, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands, or West Yorkshire:

"Kingswood, South Gloucestershire, UK"
"Bletchley, Milton Keynes, UK"
"Reading, Berkshire, UK"
"Birmingham, West Midlands, UK"
"Fulham, Greater London, UK"
etc.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by AdrianBruce »

Peter Collier wrote:... the legal position of the unitary authority areas in England is that they are non-metropolitan counties, although -- go figure -- their councils are non-metropolitan district councils ...
Oh good grief.... I hadn't twigged that combination. I now live in what is described as the Borough of Cheshire East. The idea of a County that is a Borough, is weird to me. We also have a Mayor, which says to me that we are not a county because Counties have Lords Lieutenants not Mayors!

It's at times like this that I have to remind myself what this is all about - which is that somehow we need to distinguish between different places with the same name. For instance, which Whitchurch are we talking about? Which Springfield? Therefore we stick on some sort of hierarchy that attempts to distinguish them. Remember, the name of Springfield is Springfield, not "Springfield, Illinois, USA".

But if the hierarchy is so obscure that it is meaningless, then does it make any sense to use it? For instance, if I refer to "Widnes, Halton, England", is that the Halton near Leeds, the Halton in Bucks (where RAF Halton is)? Well, the clue is that it's the Halton containing Widnes. Err - isn't that the wrong way round? Isn't Halton supposed to be there to determine which Widnes, not Widnes to determine which Halton? :?

More and more, I come to the conclusion that I have rules but reserve the right to ignore them whenever it seems more useful to use another hierarchy. Realising that is at least useful, thank you!
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by Peter Collier »

The 1997 Lieutenancies Act separated ceremonial counties ("counties and areas for the purposes of the lieutenancies in Great Britain") from administrative counties.

The Lord Lieutenant of Cheshire performs his duties within the ceremonial county of Cheshire, which for the purposes of administration comprises four non-metropolitan counties (Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Halton, and Warrington).

All non-metropolitan counties have districts. Counties that are administered as unitary authorities have only one district and that district is coextensive with its county. Importantly, administration in UA areas is at the district level, there is no county council. The administrative county just sits there, legally existing but doing nothing - it is basically a "wrapper" for the district. So, in the county of Cheshire East for example, there is a non-metropolitan district that is governed by a council that calls itself Cheshire East Council (legally it is The County of Cheshire East District Council).

Borough status is granted by Royal Charter to metropolitan and non-metropolitan districts. Such a charter was granted to the district of Cheshire East. Therefore the district of Cheshire East is a Borough, and its council is thus headed by a Mayor. However, the important legal distinction to note here is that it is the district of Cheshire East that is a borough, not the county.

It all seems unnecessarily complicated, but that's the way they do it.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by Peter Collier »

But if the hierarchy is so obscure that it is meaningless, then does it make any sense to use it? For instance, if I refer to "Widnes, Halton, England", is that the Halton near Leeds, the Halton in Bucks (where RAF Halton is)? Well, the clue is that it's the Halton containing Widnes. Err - isn't that the wrong way round? Isn't Halton supposed to be there to determine which Widnes, not Widnes to determine which Halton? :?


Understand and agree.

The answer, of course, is that if we are using the town-county-country system, then in the place described as "Widnes, Halton, England", Halton must be a county. Since you will of course immediately recall there is only one county in the UK called Halton (you do keep an up-to-date mental list of all of the UK's administrative counties, don't you?), then the other two Haltons mentioned be excluded from consideration since they are settlements of one kind or another, not counties. :lol:
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by kbella »

Oh my, all this and the Ridings have not come up! :D
My husband was born in Todmorden, Yorkshire and his family comes from all around that area, which is near Halifax. I often find records transcribed as "Lancashire Yorkshire" which threw me for a loop when I was trying to understand the place names there. Then, of course, the border moved and Tod was in Lancashire. As stated above, I like to record things as found, but in some cases I just have to make a decision, as two counties are just not allowed in genealogy software!
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by jmurphy »

AdrianBruce wrote:A linked question with tongue in cheek - for those of us who claim our UK place-names are "settlement, county, country" - what do we do with unitary authorities? Do we treat them as similar to counties corporate?

Such as "Warrington, Lancashire, England" up to 1974; "Warrington, Cheshire, England" up to 1998 when it became a unitary authority, then "Warrington, Warrington Borough, England"????? :?

NB - the unitary authority of Warrington Borough covers more than the old town of Warrington.

Personally, it's "Warrington, Lancashire, England" throughout for me, but as I explained, I don't have many people in such peripatetic places....
Funny you should mention this; I just stumbled upon a record from a new place which made me aware of the "is it Lancashire or is it Cheshire" problem.

IMHO we are not well-served by GEDCOM in this matter. I would rather see software which allowed users to record changing information about a place and its jurisdictions in the same way we can have a timeline for a person -- but even then, there might be odd cases which break the system, e.g. if someone were doing house history, how would they deal with the house that was picked up and moved several blocks down my street a couple of decades ago?

I have generally followed the custom of using whatever gazetteer the Family History Library makes use of as my standardized place, with notes about the place and jurisdiction at that time in research notes and in a note attached to that particular source. This is by analogy with the cataloging I do with my record collection, whose 'genre' reflects not what the genre really is, but the category I need to look in if I want to find something at the record store.

Since the Family History Library place search goes from largest jurisdiction to smallest, I often do cleanup by swapping the fields around so the country is first.

To keep myself from getting confused, I have decided to record "Kingsbridge Reg District" and the like for GRO indices, where otherwise there might be confusion between the District and the Town of the same name. Putting that level of jurisdiction in the second slot helps to 'even out' the place tables when working both in the US and the UK, since US 'counties' are the most like a Registration District.

Whatever system one chooses, I encourage everyone to keep track of the jurisdictions of the day when analyzing any historical record. I was helping another genealogist in the US look for someone in a US Naturalization index -- this was a locator for local court records and US District Court records created mostly before 1906. Like many indexes, it is confusing if you aren't already familiar with the underlying record group, but once you have seen one record along with its corresponding index card, things become more clear.

She did not find her immigrant on the first pass because she was expecting to find him in the index as having come from Ireland. But if you look at the fields on the card, it asks for the Country of Birth or Allegiance, so her immigrant's record said "Great Britain", which was what you would expect for the time period of his arrival.
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AdrianBruce
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

Post by AdrianBruce »

jmurphy wrote:... To keep myself from getting confused, I have decided to record "Kingsbridge Reg District" and the like for GRO indices, where otherwise there might be confusion between the District and the Town of the same name. ...
I wholly agree with adding in something like "Reg. District" to distinguish that from the town of the same name.

I'm afraid American genealogical practice of omitting the type of jurisdiction frustrates me. Apparently we are somehow supposed to realise that "ABC, Los Angeles, California, USA" is a settlement in the county of Los Angeles, rather than a suburb of the city of LA - city and county being different in the case of LA. I'm sure, of course, that the two Californians above me in this list understand this!!!! ;)
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

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I was just doing some cleanup for an old file, and discovered that I had both Slapton, Devon, England, and Slapton, Kingsbridge R.D., Devon, England (probably an artifact of the 1939 Register). "What would FHUG advise for best practices?" I thought, then discovered I had already written posts about this topic. :oops:
AdrianBruce wrote:
jmurphy wrote:... To keep myself from getting confused, I have decided to record "Kingsbridge Reg District" and the like for GRO indices, where otherwise there might be confusion between the District and the Town of the same name. ...
I wholly agree with adding in something like "Reg. District" to distinguish that from the town of the same name.

I'm afraid American genealogical practice of omitting the type of jurisdiction frustrates me. Apparently we are somehow supposed to realise that "ABC, Los Angeles, California, USA" is a settlement in the county of Los Angeles, rather than a suburb of the city of LA - city and county being different in the case of LA. I'm sure, of course, that the two Californians above me in this list understand this!!!! ;)
I should have replied to Adrian sooner to say: some US genealogists do agree with you, and include the county in their place names. Very often, the city and county will be consolidated (City and County of San Francisco). Best practice is probably to spell out the word "county" in full, e.g. Alameda, Alameda County, California (plus whatever you like for USA) but it can get very long, especially if you spell out United States. But it makes situations like "(blank), Alameda County, California" where you have a town and county name which are the same name much more clear.

We also have the independent city problem -- see Wikipedia for details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independe ... ed_States)
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

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That is a good example of the problems we face in the UK with place names.

There are several Reg Districts that included Slapton.
1837 - 1998 Kingsbridge Reg District see https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/kingsbridge.html
1998 - 2007 South Hams Reg District see https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/ ... 0hams.html
2007 - now Devon Registration District see https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/devon.html

Lookup Slapton in Google Maps and it gives:
Slapton Kingsbridge TQ7 2QR
Slapton is a village and civil parish in the South Hams district of Devon, England. It is located near the A379 road between Kingsbridge and Dartmouth, and lies within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

I live just a dozen miles away and it is a beautiful area.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

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jmurphy wrote:... Best practice is probably to spell out the word "county" in full, e.g. Alameda, Alameda County, California (plus whatever you like for USA) but it can get very long, especially if you spell out United States. ...
Thanks Jan. Sounds good best practice to me.

These issues seem to come up especially for me around the Family Search Standard Place-names tools https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/, where the standard names currently omit any hint of the type of place-name - it's neither in the name itself nor as extra data. This leads to particular confusion around the Independent City of Baltimore, where both the City and County end up as "Baltimore, Maryland, United States". In fairness, FS do recognise that there are issues, while nobody said this sort of thing was easy - but... It's one reason why I'm seriously dubious about the concept of a Place Name Authority "table" that has been mooted. Nobody can be expected to be an authority everywhere.
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Re: Place names - counties corporate

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tatewise wrote:That is a good example of the problems we face in the UK with place names.

There are several Reg Districts that included Slapton.
1837 - 1998 Kingsbridge Reg District see https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/kingsbridge.html
1998 - 2007 South Hams Reg District see https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/ ... 0hams.html
2007 - now Devon Registration District see https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/devon.html

Lookup Slapton in Google Maps and it gives:
Slapton Kingsbridge TQ7 2QR
Slapton is a village and civil parish in the South Hams district of Devon, England. It is located near the A379 road between Kingsbridge and Dartmouth, and lies within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

I live just a dozen miles away and it is a beautiful area.
Yes, I'd love to visit, but I don't know if we'll ever be able to do so. (Small world story: When I was still working in the bookstore, one day I was chatting with an out-of-town customer and he was from Paignton.)

I've just posted a new thread about difficulties searching for Slapton in the 1939 Register: viewtopic.php?f=39&t=15862&p=85050#p8505

If you look at this guide:
https://www.findmypast.com/articles/193 ... -districts
Those outside of London include various abbreviations after them:

R.D – rural district

U.D – urban district

M.B – municipal borough

C.B – county borough

E.D. letter codes – Enumeration District letter codes are displayed on the transcript and image.
Slapton is in Kingsbridge R.D. (rural district) so I think I had better stick with "Reg District" as a short-form to keep it separate from Kingsbridge Rural District in the 1939 Register. Argh!

Annoyingly, Slapton is mis-indexed as "Hapton" in the 1911 Census, so when I do a global search as a quick check to see how many people of a particular name are in the census over the decades, I often catch myself asking "Why don't I see any results from 1911?" and then smacking myself because I have to do a second search for 1911 under Hapton.
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