Places, Counties

[Bill Guion]

I'm looking for input from those who have already addressed this.

For places, I try to use a standard format: city, county, state, country; or at least as close to this as I can for each place. If information is missing, I leave a blank where it should be. So, for instance, if I don't know the city, I type , Cherokee, Georgia, USA.

My question relates to independent cities. I have a few (Richmond, Virginia, for one) that is an Independent City, that is it does not belong to a county. So I enter Richmond, , Virginia, USA. And several months later, I look at my places and discover that I have failed to enter a county for Richmond. Look it up and find that there is no county. No big deal. What I'd like to do is enter something to indicate that there is no county, to distinguish this case from the cases where I simply have not looked up the county yet.

My first thought is Richmond, [IC], Virginia, USA, but I just wondered if anyone else has addressed this.

-----===== Bill =====-----

[theKiwi]

Re: Places, Counties

Don't let yourself get bound by some artificial constraint that all places MUST be represented by exactly 4 entities.

Just use as many commas as it takes to accurately represent the place - so:

Richmond, Virginia, USA
Cherokee, , Georgia, USA
1213 Some Street, Caledonia, Kent Co., Michigan, USA

etc etc

Roger

[Linda Thomas]

Re: Places, Counties

I'm with Roger. Use however many places are appropriate for the place. Artificially adding placeholder entries doesn't really buy you anything.

If a city isn't part of a county, I just have three entries for it.

In other couties, like Baltimore County where a lot of places that are geographically dispersed are called "Baltimore" I add the neighborhood in to make it clear so I end up with entries like this:

Baltimore (city), Maryland, United States
Dundalk, Baltimore (county), Maryland, United States

I add the "(city)" and "(county)" qualifiers in for cases like this where a city and county have the same name to avoid ambiguity. Someone shouldn't have to be familiar with the geography to understand that Dundalk is part of Baltimore County and not the city.

[saoi]

Re: Places, Counties

Don't let yourself get bound by some artificial constraint that all places MUST be represented by exactly 4 entities.

Just use as many commas as it takes to accurately represent the place - so:

Richmond, Virginia, USA
Cherokee, , Georgia, USA
1213 Some Street, Caledonia, Kent Co., Michigan, USA

etc etc

Roger

On the other hand there's nothing to prevent you from using Richmond twice. I see no difference from an Independent City and a City/County as in
San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA to represent the City and County of SF

rich

[dfilpus]

Re: Places, Counties

On the other hand there's nothing to prevent you from using Richmond twice. I see no difference from an Independent City and a City/County as in
San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA to represent the City and County of SF

rich

Except that there is a separate Richmond County in Virginia, down east. The city of Richmond is an Independant City, not part of any county, but acts as a county in Virginia, but it is not associated with Richmond County in any way.

[Bill Guion]

Re: Places, Counties

I'm with Roger. Use however many places are appropriate for the place. Artificially adding placeholder entries doesn't really buy you anything.

If a city isn't part of a county, I just have three entries for it.

In other couties, like Baltimore County where a lot of places that are geographically dispersed are called "Baltimore" I add the neighborhood in to make it clear so I end up with entries like this:

Baltimore (city), Maryland, United States
Dundalk, Baltimore (county), Maryland, United States

I add the "(city)" and "(county)" qualifiers in for cases like this where a city and county have the same name to avoid ambiguity. Someone shouldn't have to be familiar with the geography to understand that Dundalk is part of Baltimore County and not the city.

Roger,

I've long enjoyed and respected your answers on this forum, and this answer ranks right up there with your best.

Roger, Linda,

I'm convinced. Use only as many placeholders as are needed. And, Linda, I hadn't thought of the city/county same name problem (yet) and I like the way you address that.

Thanks.

To the other posters, I guess there are many exceptions (is San Francisco City a part of or separate from San Francisco County) and each exception will have to be dealt with in the best way possible for that exception.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

-----===== Bill =====-----

[Mark Hurd]

Re: Places, Counties

I have a somewhat related question that has to do with place holder commas. I have a number of folks where the only info I have is that so-and-so was born in say- Ohio. No city or county information.

Would you enter this as: , , Ohio
Or just enter it as: Ohio

And does anyone know if one is better than the other for a future GEDCOM transfer?

-Mark

[Linda Thomas]

Re: Places, Counties

Would you enter this as: , , Ohio
Or just enter it as: Ohio

And does anyone know if one is better than the other for a future GEDCOM transfer?

-Mark

I would enter it as "Ohio, United States" but if you stop at the state level, then simply "Ohio" is fine.

As to gedcom compatibility, the standard doesn't really say anything about place name details. Most applications will take whatever is in the PLAC tags without any interpretation (though they might also give you some tools to do lat/lon or other map related stuff.

[theKiwi]

Re: Places, Counties

I have a somewhat related question that has to do with place holder commas. I have a number of folks where the only info I have is that so-and-so was born in say- Ohio. No city or county information.

Would you enter this as: , , Ohio
Or just enter it as: Ohio

And does anyone know if one is better than the other for a future GEDCOM transfer

There is no good reason to put leading commas on places - if you do, then the first question is how many? See above for why there is no correct answer to this.


I would enter it as

Ohio, USA

which clearly indicates that Ohio is one of an unknown number of "top level" divisions within the USA. Then when Reunion, or any other genealogy software does a "Reverse Place Name Sort", all your USA places will list together, and then within that all the Ohio places will list together, etc etc.

Roger

[theKiwi]

Re: Places, Counties

I'm with Roger. Use however many places are appropriate for the place. Artificially adding placeholder entries doesn't really buy you anything.

If a city isn't part of a county, I just have three entries for it.

In other couties, like Baltimore County where a lot of places that are geographically dispersed are called "Baltimore" I add the neighborhood in to make it clear so I end up with entries like this:

Baltimore (city), Maryland, United States
Dundalk, Baltimore (county), Maryland, United States

I add the "(city)" and "(county)" qualifiers in for cases like this where a city and county have the same name to avoid ambiguity. Someone shouldn't have to be familiar with the geography to understand that Dundalk is part of Baltimore County and not the city.

I would do these 2 examples a little differently, but with the same end result...

Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Dundaik, Baltimore Co., Maryland, USA

So that Baltimore and Baltimore County are identified uniquely, and in a reverse place name sort will not be mixed in with each other.

With a little acknowledgement of abbreviations, I allow myself the use of

Twp. = Township
Co. = County
USA = United States of America

I think these abbreviations are pretty clear and well understood. Other things do not get abbreviated, so I'd use

Orleans Parish, Lousiana, USA

rather than attempting to make any likely misunderstood abbreviation for Parish.

Roger

[thboyd]

Re: Places, Counties

There is no good reason to put leading commas on places - if you do, then the first question is how many? See above for why there is no correct answer to this.


I would enter it as

Ohio, USA

Roger

This has me thinking how I should be entering places. I've always used commas to clarify whether a place name is a city or county (for places in the US). For example:

Munford, Tipton, TN, USA is the town of Munford, located in the county of Tipton in the state of TN and

, Tipton, TN is somewhere in the county of Tipton, with the exact location unknown.

Occasionally I know the name of the city but not the county (some cities span multiple counties or maybe the actual city/town no longer exists and I simply don't know where it was). This would be represented by:

Atlanta, , GA, USA where I don't know if the location was in Fulton county or DeKalb county and the two commas indicate that there is an unknown county not shown.

This procedure carried over (I really don't remember exactly why) to representing a place where I only know the state as:

, , TN, USA

What you're saying is that there is no benefit to including the leading commas, even though having commas to indicate missing localities as in the Atlanta example above seems to me to still be the correct way to do it. In this case, the above example of unknown location in Tipton County, TN would be entered as:

Tipton, TN, USA

and an unknown place in the state of Tennessee would simply be:

TN, USA

I think this is better than the leading commas and still provides the clarity.

BTW, I don't distinguish between parishes (Louisiana) and Counties (most other states) since they are the equivalent jurisdictions just with different designations due to historical reasons.

A different question is how to handle states that have intermediate jurisdictions between cities and counties, such as Pennsylvania, which has the hierarchy of city, township, county, state. I'm not sure how to handle this. This question is related to how to designate locations within a city such as an address, a cemetery or a hospital. For example:

Crigger Cemetery, Munford, Tipton, TN

or

125 West Main Street, Munford, Tipton, TN

or even

Crigger Cemetery, 237 Beaver Road, Munford, Tipton, TN

I don't think there's an ambiguity here.

[Mark Hurd]

Re: Places, Counties

Linda and Roger- Thanks for the input. You are right, I should probably add USA where appropriate and I think I will update my counties with "Co" for clarity. That will eliminate all of those unsightly sets of place holder commas I have scattered around.
-Mark

[Linda Thomas]

Re: Places, Counties

A different question is how to handle states that have intermediate jurisdictions between cities and counties, such as Pennsylvania, which has the hierarchy of city, township, county, state. I'm not sure how to handle this. This question is related to how to designate locations within a city such as an address, a cemetery or a hospital. For example:

Crigger Cemetery, Munford, Tipton, TN

or

125 West Main Street, Munford, Tipton, TN

or even

Crigger Cemetery, 237 Beaver Road, Munford, Tipton, TN

I don't think there's an ambiguity here.

For states like Pennsylvania, I enter the township between the town and the county. In the past I both lived and worked in Rosemont which spans two different townships in two different counties. I have entries like:
Rosemont, Lower Merion Township, Montgomery, Pennsylvania, United States
and
Rosemont, Radnor Township, Delaware, Pennsylvania, United States

If I know the name of the actual place or the address I add that in. I use the name for things like cemeteries and the address for things like residences.
Greenlawn Cemetery, Salem, Essex, Massachusetts, United States
or
123 Main Street, Salem, Essex, Massachusetts, United States

I know a lot of people only add places down to the town level but I find it useful to add addresses when I know then. It makes it easy to see when people were living together or near each other. It can create more clutter on a map though if you plot the places in person's life and you ahve a lot of events.

[Paul.Hunt]

Re: Places, Counties

This has me thinking how I should be entering places. I've always used commas to clarify whether a place name is a city or county (for places in the US). For example:

Munford, Tipton, TN, USA is the town of Munford, located in the county of Tipton in the state of TN and ...

I vary from this in one respect; I spell out the state name as not everyone, especially those not in the US, knows all the abbreviations. (AL for Alabama, for example, NOT Alaska, MI for Michigan, NOT Minnesota or Missouri or Mississippi).

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Places, Counties

I vary from this in one respect; I spell out the state name as not everyone, especially those not in the US, knows all the abbreviations. (AL for Alabama, for example, NOT Alaska, MI for Michigan, NOT Minnesota or Missouri or Mississippi).

The other advantage is that spelling things out makes errors from a single mistyped letter much less likely. (MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MT vs Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, etc.)