Since quite some time I am trying to embedd localities into their historical context:
And doing so, I surf along the limits of what RM is capable of doing. Therefore a few suggestions:
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it would be great to have an additional field to contain the original information gleaned from some document. Often this is just a village name in some more/less recognizable spelling. The way things are now, this original information is being overwritten by every attempt to make a locality more readable, and thus it becomes practically impossible to become aware of errors.
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to put localitie into their historical context one needs to add an information from when to when this context is valid, i.e.
Görmin, Amt Loitz, Hzm. Pommern (unter schwed. Krone), HRR-Lehen (1648‑10‑24 – 1806‑06‑27)
Görmin, Här. Grimmen, Svenska Pommern, Sverige (fr. Besatzung) (1807-10-29 - 1810-01-29)
Görmin, Kr. Grimmen, Prov. Pommern, Kgr. Preußen, Deutscher Bund (1818‑10‑01 – 1866-08-23)
Görmin, Kr. Demmin, Prov. Pommern, Kgr. Preußen, Norddeutscher Bund (1867‑07‑01 – 1870‑12‑31)
Görmin, Kr. Demmin, Prov. Pommern, Kgr. Preußen, Deutsches Kaiserreich (1871-01-01 – 1918-11-09)
Görmin, Kr. Demmin, Prov. Pommern, FS Preußen, Deutsches Reich (WR) (1919‑08‑11 – 1933‑01‑29)
Görmin, Kr. Demmin, Prov. Pommern, FS Preußen, Deutsches Reich (NS) (1938‑10‑01 – 1945‑05‑08)
to just mention a few examples.
Presently there is no such field under “Places” and it is not possible to sort within any given locality according to such dates
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localities are embedded into a hierarchy of administrative structures. In a given period such a structure encompasses plenty of localities, i.e.
Derschow, Amt Greifswald, Hzm. Pommern (unter schwed. Krone), HRR-Lehen (1648‑10‑24 – 1806‑06‑27)
Dersekow, Amt Greifswald, Hzm. Pommern (unter schwed. Krone), HRR-Lehen (1648‑10‑24 – 1806‑06‑27)
Groß Bisdorf, Amt Greifswald, Hzm. Pommern (unter schwed. Krone), HRR-Lehen (1648‑10‑24 – 1806‑06‑27)
Ladebow, Amt Greifswald, Hzm. Pommern (unter schwed. Krone), HRR‑Lehen (1648‑10‑24 – 1806‑06‑27)
Wouldn’t it be possible to organize Localities in hierarchies? I know, this isn’t exactly where RM comes from, but it’s a relational database, isn’t it? And it seems to me that this will become more and more relevant, so why not trail-blaze such a functionality?
There is a note field that you can put detailed information on the location. I recorded when counties or place names changed. The Name field is used in geocoding. Enter the current name for it to be found first. It will fill in the Standard place name with the geocode. Then edit the name to show the historical name. That way the Standard field will remain the current place name and the Name field is the historical place name.
Thanks, but this doesn’t even do half the work. The administrative embedding of place names changes frequently in Germany - as I showed above. So I need to place the information about the validity period somewhere. I can put it into the note, but then, the note is often used for really individual additional information. I can place it in ‘Abbrev’ even though it does not belong there, but I don’t use this field otherwise. Both options are not really good, because the information from when to when a certain locality-identification-string has been valid needs to appear with each and every such string. It therefore definitely deserves an own field. Now, when I enter the locality ‘Görmin’ for example and I look for suggestions. I get more than a dozend suggestions which are alphabetically sorted - not chronologically. This is anything but convenient - and it blocks fields from being used as intended.
Confirming request has been reported to development.
Renee, I’ve also been working hard on putting places into their temporal framework, and not having much success. As a simpler example, I’m looking at the differences in location names for what today is Norfolk, Virginia. Not many name changes over just a few centuries existence, but enough. The problem is, when typing in a place name, there is no indication at that time to the user that the place was named such-and-such in a particular time period.
If I have a relative born there in 1830, they might be born in a rural part of the county, Norfolk. Easy selection, I choose Norfolk, Virginia, United States. In many traditional genealogical systems, just choosing Norfolk, Virginia, United States would do the trick since in the third position from the right, in America, you’d expect county name. But today (anytime after 1871), Norfolk is considered an ‘independent city’ in Virginia and Norfolk County is all but non-existent. You can see where simply choosing Norfolk, Virginia might be problematic in proper record keeping.
What I’d like to see is some sort of functionality where, if I input the date of an event then begin typing the place name, any place that already exists in the database will be filtered out if not active within the date I entered.
Using that, in another example town across the James River from Norfolk which exists today as Hampton, you might see something like this. If my date on an event were 1633, ‘Hampton’ should not appear as an option when entering the name (unless it isn’t already in the database). Instead, there might be Elizabeth Cittie only available in that time period. Later, it was called Elizabeth River Shire. And so on…
I hope that makes sense.
Do you have CountyCheck turned on? When you enter the wrong place name for the timeframe it will give suggestions and let you change it.
I just tried that. Thank you, Renee.
But, in another case, Ottersweier (a village in Germany), it did not work at all when I placed the date as 2 May 1730 and entered the Place name. I got no warnings at all.
It allowed me to select Ottersweier, Bühl, Baden-Baden, Holy Roman Empire. But in 1730, Ottersweier is more properly called Ottersweier, Bühl, Margraviate of Baden, Holy Roman Empire. Or, even more correctly historic would be Ottersweier, Landvogtei Ortenau, Baden-Baden, Holy Roman Empire depending on whether you want correct administrative name or a more geographically stable name.
Today, it would be Ottersweier, Landkreis Rastatt, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. But even that didn’t appear as a CountyCheck correction.
(Like I said, been researching historically accurate place names for quite a while now)
But, thank you for looking into it.
CountyCheck only covers US, UK, Canadian, and Australian counties and states.
If you need to research a little further which place to select for the time frame, click on the globe icon in the place field. It will bring up the place list for the database. Highlight the place, and the notes you have entered on that location are visible in the side panel. Select the correct location for the time frame and click OK.
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