4 replies to this topic

[Shiro]

I have heard of a mapping software that shows the original county to which a current county area originally belonged, and the various territories from which states developed.  Does Family Atlas do this?  It would be very helpful because if a person's address was in one county when they lived but now the area they used to live is included in newer county, you could be looking in the wrong reference area for information on that family. 

[zhangrau]

You may want to consider the CountyCheck feature of Rootsmagic. Go to Tools - Program Options- General - Use CountyCheck when entering places.

 

Since I prefer my place names to be formatted differently than CountyCheck, I have it turned off. But for the situation you describe, I can imagine something like this: insert a current event into the place you want to investigate, and see if CountyCheck suggests a different county than you have recorded for the older events in that place.

[Laura]

The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, State list for the United States is a good online resource for changes in state and county boundaries which CountyCheck in formats RM does not provide.

 

http://publications..../statelist.html

 

Select the state and then select the way you want the data presented by clicking on the Bold headings.

 

You can also download a KMZ file for use with Google Earth and Google maps or a PDF file for each state.

 

The PDF file has maps which shows the historical boundaries for the counties and the present day boundaries.

[Shiro]

Thank you both so much.  This is exactly the information I was looking forward.

[Vyger]

It would be very helpful because if a person's address was in one county when they lived but now the area they used to live is included in newer county, you could be looking in the wrong reference area for information on that family. 

 

Whilst changing boundaries, place names and jurisdictions are very interesting and a subject of their own the only reliable notation of where an event took place is the point on earth (geocoding). Rootsmagic allows this for both Place and Place Details (the farm, the hospital, the cemetary etc). When Printing a Place or location there is an option to "Print events near a place" which then allows you to enter a radius in miles which is perfect for finding other events which took place in a specified area.

 

This needs some refinement to encompass Place Details and maybe specifying your own co-ordinates but I would hope this will happen in the next software version.