I'm glad to see that I'm in line with the general consensus here, namely to include the work "County" after the name of the county. I've observed that this practice has evolved somewhat over the past decade. Seems originally somebody thought the nice, clean method of "City, County, State, (optional Country)" was the prescribed method. But I immediately saw a problem in that many cities, townships, and counties all have the same name. For example, the city of Mudville, in Mudville Township, in Mudville County. When you run across some source that left out the critical location word and only provided "Mudville, State" or "Mudville, Mudville, State" (as in Ancestry's 1880 census reports), then are they talking the city of Mudville or the township of Mudville. (Note to people across the pond either in the UK or the land down under --- a township is not the same as a town. It is normally just a geographic part of a County which is divided up into several townships.)
The bottom line is that I enter my data in the following fashion. If it's the city of Mudville, then I write "Mudville, Mudville County, State". If it is the township of Mudville (which is not necessarily the same as the city limits), then I write "Mudville Township, Mudville County, State". The location description may look long but at least I know specifically what area is being described. I've gotten lazy and leave out the "USA" part. Figure I don't know of anybody in the EU that I'll be sending my family file to. Brian in CA > -----Original Message----- > From: Kathy Meyer [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2010 11:47 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Legacy and County Names > > I was told at one time that you should always use the word "county" > following the actual county name anytime you did not have a city to > precede it; otherwise, as you stated, one would assume that it was the > city name, even if you had the leading commas to separate fields. It > was at some sort of conference or class and they said it was helpful > to do that as a habit anyway, just to be very clear. I have not done > that in the past and have not changed my database to reflect that but > I thought it made very good sense. Wouldn't it be nice to simply have > fields that are specifically for city or town, parish, county, state, > country? Then those inadvertent errors would diminish; a lot of > people don't even know to put in the commas to designate a missing > field. > > Kathy > > On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Alan Jones <[email protected]> wrote: > > The previous genealogy program I used had you put "Co." after the > > county name so you had place location of > > Little Rock, Pulaski Co., Arkansas, USA > > > > However in the Legacy training and the Geo Database it does not use > or > > seam to like the "Co." on the end. Thus output was: Little Rock, > > Pulaski, Arkansas, USA > > > > When I moved to Legacy I pulled "Co." off of everything as I found it > > trying to follow the convention. Now in some of my reports and other > > things I look back and think it might have been nice to have had the > Co. > > for the County. > > > > So my questions are: > > > > What is the reasoning Legacy does not put them on? > > > > Are there reasons not to have the Co. on the end? > > > > I did note in some reading that if you just have the county name then > > your are supposed to put "Co." or something on the end so people > don't > > get confused and think it was a City. So why not allow it all the > time. > > > > Anyone else just force it on? It means you can't use the default > lookup > > in the Geo Database. It certainly would be something easy to fix and > > add as a feature to Legacy to have it put Co. on county names on if > it > > did not cause problems. > > > > Is there a research/genealogical reason not to do this? > > > > Anyone else ever run into this question? > > > > thoughts? > > > > thanks > > > > Alan > > Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
