The bottom line is "whatever works for you".
95%+ of my database is US & Canada. 4-fields is too cumbersome for me and I want to be able to sort by city,county,state. Some places don't have counties so it's a stretch to even get 3 fields sometimes. I drop USA from all locations because nothing is more aggravating to me than looking at a report with thousands of "….., USA" in it. Duh! If the reader in the US doesn't know that MA is Massachusetts, NY is New York, and that they are in USA, they would not be involved in genealogy to read the report in the first place. Since Canada uses the same 2-letter state/province codes, I also delete Canada using just QC, ON, NB, etc. (For me US & Canada is just one big family. And besides, all these provinces existed before Canada did (1867).) So… My third field is state/province for US & Canada that most of my research is in, and the country for everywhere else. If I do have an extra field like a parish, I can hyphenate or add parentheses like "All Saints - Sudbury, Suffolk, England" or "Black Point-Scarborough, Cumberland, ME" or "Milltown (Calais), Washington, ME" or "Torstensgarden - Lilla Edet, Alvsborg, Sweden". I use state abbreviations, but spell out names of countries. If I want to sort locations, having 3 fields is what makes it sort the best rather than 3 and 4 fields. For pre-Revolution, I still put the county and state rather than Colony for sake of simplicity of people knowing the location. If I officially publish something, the Foreword can explain those things. It's what works for me. Roland Rhoades Maine Families Genealogist www.RolandRhoades.com [email protected] 2010: 30 Years as a Genealogist From: Mary LeClerc [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 3:06 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [LegacyUG] Re: location names Sorry I tagged onto another thread. I'm new to the usergroup and couldn't find how to start a new thread myself (plus it's late a night--that's my excuse). I'm not suggesting changing name locations. Just the opposite. I'm constantly finding people showing a U.S. city in a county that simply didn't exist at the given date. They've either copied from someone else who did the same thing, or they have changed what the original record showed. I want to preserve the original record and be historically correct at the same time. For awhile I solved the pre/post colonial U.S. issue by simply not putting any country. But I've been recently reminded that there are people in other countries (I'm joking here.). My software very easily can go in and put either "U.S.A." or "United States" after all the locations it recognizes as being states. But that just doesn't work for pre-revolution dates and I have a lot of those. I appreciate your comment about the four fields not working for all countries. I was just inputting some English records this evening and understand what you mean. Thanks. Mary On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 1:23 AM, Ron Ferguson <[email protected]> wrote: Mary, Whilst what you say may or may not be possible for the time at which the country was a colony, please remember that the American 4 field convention does not work for much of the world. In my view it is quite wrong to change the name of a Location just to make it fit. Ron Ferguson http://www.fergys.co.uk/ From: Mary LeClerc <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 6:29 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Splitting a family group from main file: advice please I'm trying to be consistent in using a four place convention for all locations. How should early Colonial American places be shown? I try to show county names as they existed at the time of the event (and don't include "County"). Clearly it would not be correct to say "United States" nor "America". thanks, Mary L. -- Mary LeClerc [email protected] My Blog: http://quiltinginoz.blogspot.com/ My Photos: http://tinyurl.com/3aylx7 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 Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
