Simple question about how a location is specified.
Figures, I shredded my notes I wanted to ask this question from.
I'll pick one from air. Is using names like Bedford, the same as using Bedfordshire?
I've never seen Kent used as Kentshire, nor Sussex. But many others I see where some have a short name, and others have the same short name followed by shire.
Sorry my mind drew a blank on names, which is not uncommon for me, so I'll ask this again tomorrow with names to go by.
But for today, let me ask this.
When we are listing the name of a burial place, once we cross the big pond, it gets confusing.
Especially when you are working with the same family members.
I may have one burial place listed as Saint Mary's Churchyard, then another member buried at Saint Mary's Priory.
I already know that if we know they are naming a cemetery, that those who add this to where someone died is a mistake.
Do you guys uses the words like Churchyard and Priory as we use the word cemetery?
And if so, someone would not then have died at a place name ending with Priory?
We had a school back home named The Priory, which the kids who went there called The Cemetery, hi hi...
Because folks on this side of the pond get confused about things easily. I do add the word Cemetery behind whatever name is used. So I would write out St. Mary's Churchyard Cemetery.
I have a lot of beefs about how things are shown for cities and towns on this side of the pond in genealogy work.
They insist on putting USA behind every state name, which is not needed. But they fail to use the word County behind the name of a county, so you never know if they listed the name of a city and forgot or didn't know the county.
This is how we end up with city names listed as county names.
I catch this fairly easily when I'm working with my home state and I see someone use Rolla County, Missouri, because there is no such county in Missouri. Rolla is in Phelps County.
To me, using the word County for a county is much more important than saying USA after the state.
They do not do this often when you hit families in England. It is rare to see England, United Kingdom or some province ending with Great Britain.
Can you imagine how much space it would take to write out the Township (which is often improperly used) the city or town, the county, the state, following by United States of America, North America? Why not keep going and add, Planet Earth, Milky Way Solar System, hi hi... But by god, leave out whether it is a city or a county name they have added to add confusion to genealogy work.
Question for our members across the big pond.
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Re: Question for our members across the big pond.
churchyard is a cemetery so no need for both. priory is not, but denotes a monastery or an abbey.
Re: Question for our members across the big pond.
Thank you Pil. I thought as much!
I started using Google to check a few names, because I wasn't sure.
The one I just checked about an hour ago was driving me nuts.
One person used: Wethersfield, Leghum, Suffolk, Suffolk, England.
The next person used: Wethersfield Leghum, Suffolk, Suffolkshire, England.
And yet another: Wethersfield-Leghum, Suffolk, England.
Had another that simply showed, Leghum, Chalgrove, Suffolk, Suffok, England.
Sometimes I will get one like Netherbury, City of Dorset, Dorsetshire, England.
And others never use the word shire at all on anything.
Google has not been much help as I find everything listed both ways.
Is Kent, England, and Kent, Middlesex, England the same place?
I've never seen shire used with Middlesex yet. So I assume some names do not have the shire suffix.
However, if I compare it to over here. We often see counties named without the word county.
Which causes great confusion as to the location. Especially if they give only a city name, and we have a county by the same name. Like Jefferson, Missouri Did they mean Jefferson County, which is near St. Louis, or did they mean the city of Jefferson which is in the middle of the state. Jefferson City is in two separate counties, Cole County, and Calloway County.
But you would be surprised at how many times I find someone who wrote, Jefferson, Jefferson, Missouri, when there is no such place in the entire state. Sometimes they even write, Jefferson, Jefferson County, Missouri, again there is not such place.
My goal is not to make the same mistake when I enter the names of town, boroughs, and shires in England.
Here, the word Township has two separate meanings. The I was most familiar with had to do with Survey Townships.
But they also use the word Township to mean a small government controlled area, aka a town or city.
Conventionally, when we do genealogy work, we list the town (if any) the county, and the state.
Unfortunately, there are genealogy programs, like Ancestry dot Com that omit the most important part of the record, the word County behind a county name. But for some reason, they think it is necessary to append USA to every location box, if in the US, but totally ignore the country name outside of the US. England does not cover the entire United Kingdom. And according to Google Maps, the United Kingdom and Great Britain are the same land mass.
Did Great Britain become the United Kingdom at some point? Nevermind, I just did a Google search with that question and it will take me roughly 99 years to figure out what the heck they are talking about, hi hi...
Have a great day!
I started using Google to check a few names, because I wasn't sure.
The one I just checked about an hour ago was driving me nuts.
One person used: Wethersfield, Leghum, Suffolk, Suffolk, England.
The next person used: Wethersfield Leghum, Suffolk, Suffolkshire, England.
And yet another: Wethersfield-Leghum, Suffolk, England.
Had another that simply showed, Leghum, Chalgrove, Suffolk, Suffok, England.
Sometimes I will get one like Netherbury, City of Dorset, Dorsetshire, England.
And others never use the word shire at all on anything.
Google has not been much help as I find everything listed both ways.
Is Kent, England, and Kent, Middlesex, England the same place?
I've never seen shire used with Middlesex yet. So I assume some names do not have the shire suffix.
However, if I compare it to over here. We often see counties named without the word county.
Which causes great confusion as to the location. Especially if they give only a city name, and we have a county by the same name. Like Jefferson, Missouri Did they mean Jefferson County, which is near St. Louis, or did they mean the city of Jefferson which is in the middle of the state. Jefferson City is in two separate counties, Cole County, and Calloway County.
But you would be surprised at how many times I find someone who wrote, Jefferson, Jefferson, Missouri, when there is no such place in the entire state. Sometimes they even write, Jefferson, Jefferson County, Missouri, again there is not such place.
My goal is not to make the same mistake when I enter the names of town, boroughs, and shires in England.
Here, the word Township has two separate meanings. The I was most familiar with had to do with Survey Townships.
But they also use the word Township to mean a small government controlled area, aka a town or city.
Conventionally, when we do genealogy work, we list the town (if any) the county, and the state.
Unfortunately, there are genealogy programs, like Ancestry dot Com that omit the most important part of the record, the word County behind a county name. But for some reason, they think it is necessary to append USA to every location box, if in the US, but totally ignore the country name outside of the US. England does not cover the entire United Kingdom. And according to Google Maps, the United Kingdom and Great Britain are the same land mass.
Did Great Britain become the United Kingdom at some point? Nevermind, I just did a Google search with that question and it will take me roughly 99 years to figure out what the heck they are talking about, hi hi...
Have a great day!
Re: Question for our members across the big pond.
i know what you mean. it helps to be from a small country where you need the name of the village and that's often it. wouldn't work now, i suppose, but in 1991 i got a letter addressed GRAMMA'S HOUSE, MINDEN, ONTARIO. and i didn't even live in town, but 8 miles out in the sticks!
perhaps tomsk or rusty could answer you if you drop them a PM, so they'll see it right away? (i guess?)
Re: Question for our members across the big pond.
Around here pretty much all you need is the complete postal zip code and you will get what is coming to you.
Re: Question for our members across the big pond.
love the wording! lol!
Re: Question for our members across the big pond.
Hi Pil, I don't claim to know anything at all about English history. But will mention something here as soon as I say this.
Although in the US, there were no states or counties before the Colonies started creating same in the late 1700s.
Even so, we find families who were living in the US in the 1600s. In genealogy work, they use the current location name to describe where they lived, and in a lot of cases where they were buried. There are several 1600s cemeteries here.
When I was a volunteer at the Family History Center, converting delicate paper documents or microfilm to digital media, they were real sticklers about using the proper names of locations at the time of the event. With a separate notation of the current name of the location today.
I'm pulling this from memory, so pardon me if I make a range of time mistake.
I do remember that when we hit families prior to like 1285, the major location was shown as "Engla Land."
After 1285 and up to around 1550, the major land was written as "Anglo-Saxon under English Crown." I may not have worded that exactly right. It's been a long time.
From around 1550 to 1700 is when we used "Kingdom of England."
After 1700 and up to 1800 we used "unified Kingdom of Great Britain, or most often just "Kingdom of Great Britain."
As if that wasn't long enough, after 1800 we had to use "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."
Then it changed once again, around 1920, and we used "Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" plus Southern Ireland for families living there.
By the 1940s all the extraneous words were dropped and "United Kingdom" or "Great Britain" became synonymous, but the Family History Center preferred we use United Kingdom in lieu of Great Britain for all records generated after 1960.
And I haven't touched on what they called the various smaller land divisions during those periods.
As far as trying to track my paternal side of the family, the result of wars and who owned the land for each period, they were not nice and destroyed each other records. Where my ancestors were raised was part-time under French rule, and part-time under German rule, and each time the ruling class changed, they destroyed all the records of those they conquered.
Thank goodness some of the churches hid their records away or we would have nothing left to go by.
Although in the US, there were no states or counties before the Colonies started creating same in the late 1700s.
Even so, we find families who were living in the US in the 1600s. In genealogy work, they use the current location name to describe where they lived, and in a lot of cases where they were buried. There are several 1600s cemeteries here.
When I was a volunteer at the Family History Center, converting delicate paper documents or microfilm to digital media, they were real sticklers about using the proper names of locations at the time of the event. With a separate notation of the current name of the location today.
I'm pulling this from memory, so pardon me if I make a range of time mistake.
I do remember that when we hit families prior to like 1285, the major location was shown as "Engla Land."
After 1285 and up to around 1550, the major land was written as "Anglo-Saxon under English Crown." I may not have worded that exactly right. It's been a long time.
From around 1550 to 1700 is when we used "Kingdom of England."
After 1700 and up to 1800 we used "unified Kingdom of Great Britain, or most often just "Kingdom of Great Britain."
As if that wasn't long enough, after 1800 we had to use "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."
Then it changed once again, around 1920, and we used "Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" plus Southern Ireland for families living there.
By the 1940s all the extraneous words were dropped and "United Kingdom" or "Great Britain" became synonymous, but the Family History Center preferred we use United Kingdom in lieu of Great Britain for all records generated after 1960.
And I haven't touched on what they called the various smaller land divisions during those periods.
As far as trying to track my paternal side of the family, the result of wars and who owned the land for each period, they were not nice and destroyed each other records. Where my ancestors were raised was part-time under French rule, and part-time under German rule, and each time the ruling class changed, they destroyed all the records of those they conquered.
Thank goodness some of the churches hid their records away or we would have nothing left to go by.
Re: Question for our members across the big pond.
Re: Question for our members across the big pond.
I guess because I lived in St. Louis, this is where all the returning records ended up for families who had births while traveling west when there were no states out there yet. So the Family History Center is who got to do all the transcription work. The birth records showed how many days they were beyond the the last fort or exchange post they passed. Who died along the way, etc.
We had several charts and maps with distance calculations and the like we used to make an informed guess as to which county the were in after the states and counties were assigned. We could make a big mistake if we couldn't figure out if they were going to California or Oregon, so we often had to organize the records first to find out where they went, if they didn't include which trail they were using. Many did not follow the main trails, and/or the main trails did not exist yet.
I will say, it was interesting doing volunteer work there for so long.
We probably had 50 to 100 thousand rolls of microfilm that were not yet indexed or organized, other than a band around them giving us a range of dates for the documents they filmed, and those dates were not often very close either.
A government office or preacher may come into a government office with a huge box of papers where he kept records for ten or twenty years, and if his handwriting was like that of a doctor, oh boy, hi hi...
We had several charts and maps with distance calculations and the like we used to make an informed guess as to which county the were in after the states and counties were assigned. We could make a big mistake if we couldn't figure out if they were going to California or Oregon, so we often had to organize the records first to find out where they went, if they didn't include which trail they were using. Many did not follow the main trails, and/or the main trails did not exist yet.
I will say, it was interesting doing volunteer work there for so long.
We probably had 50 to 100 thousand rolls of microfilm that were not yet indexed or organized, other than a band around them giving us a range of dates for the documents they filmed, and those dates were not often very close either.
A government office or preacher may come into a government office with a huge box of papers where he kept records for ten or twenty years, and if his handwriting was like that of a doctor, oh boy, hi hi...