Scott, I agree with you about using the word Township (although we do
abbreviate it as Twp consistently because it is well understood in
America, but I get your point). I probably will re-visit this and use a
FIND and REPLACE to change the abbreviation from Twp to spelling out
Township).
I did want to mention one thing more: I live in Michigan and for the
last number of years, Townships that do not share same names with
villages or cities are beginning to completely omit the Township
description in mailing and most of their records, except for their
official records, apparently). *For example, all mail delivered to
Shelby Township, Michigan simply now says Shelby, Michigan.*
Jerry Boor
https://www.MerriamFamilyTree.org
On 08/04/2019 10:52, Scott Hall wrote:
I wanted to chime into this conversation because I find entering place
names to be a challenge as well, and Pennsylvania is a perfect example.
First, I concur with those who say enter the place name as it was at
the time of the event. Those who enter the modern address and add the
historic address in the notes have an interesting alternative, but
it's not the preferred method as place names (even modern ones) can
change.
But, that's not really what I wanted to talk about. Early on I
discovered a challenge when more than one "root name" exists within a
larger administrative division. For example, in Lycoming County,
there is both Muncy Township, and Muncy, a borough. Muncy, the
borough, is part of Muncy Creek Township, not Muncy Township. This is
far from an isolated case -- numerous counties in Pennsylvania have a
township and a borough with the same name that are separate
administrative divisions and where the borough is not located within
the township.
Now, the commonly accepted place recording convention, as far as I
understand it, is that descriptors like village, town, county, etc.
are not recorded unless officially part of the name. Even New York
City should be recorded as "New York" with the appropriate county (New
York, Bronx, Richmond, etc.) recorded--but that's a different discussion.
Back to Pennsylvania....when you come across a record that simply says
"Muncy", which Muncy is it? Let's say you can figure it out...you
know it's the Township. Now, generally you'd record it as Muncy,
Lycoming, Pennsylvania, USA -- but if you do, when you (or someone
else) comes back to it -- which Muncy did you mean?
So, to solve this problem, I've started to include the word "Township"
in the record -- "Muncy Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania,
USA". And, of course, that means I also have to use "Borough" --
"Muncy Borough, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, USA". But what if
Muncy was a city? Would I enter "Muncy City, Lycoming County,
Pennsylvania"? Or perhaps, "Muncy (city), Lycoming County,
Pennsylvania, USA"? I'd prefer not.
Perhaps only Townships should get that designation, as generally I
found that they are the one entity that tends to bear the same name as
another administrative division. But in much of the northeast, like
New York, there are no townships, only towns, which often have
villages or cities bearing the same name contained within them (e.g.
Canandaigua is a city wholly contained with the Town of Canandaigua).
While in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, or much of the midwest
people may refer to a township by saying the word "township", in New
York they certainly don't. No one says Canandaigua town, nor
Canandaigua city. So, same problem.
This latter issue is less significant than the Pennsylvania problem,
though, as at least one entity is contained with another. But, in
Pennsylvania, as I pointed out, they do not always bear this relationship.
Thoughts?
On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 5:47 PM Connie Laubach <bluecorab...@gmail.com
<mailto:bluecorab...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Trying to decide how to input the location names – I have
townships that are made up of villages and boroughs. How are
others handling it?
I have thought of the following:
Village, township, county, state, United States
or
township-village, country, state, United States (I like this as
all villages within the township would be listed together)
Thank you, Connie.
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for Windows 10
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