2 replies to this topic

[rwcrooks]

I'm going through my locations and correcting them before RM8 is released.

 

I currently have a whole lot of Quebec ancestors and I'd like some feedback and ideas on what would be the "proper" way to record the location.  For instance, I have Ambroise Samson baptized at St Joseph de la Pointe Levy, Lauzon, Quebec, Canada; where "St Joseph de la Pointe Levy" is the parish and the remainder the location (more on this later.)

 

So, what are people doing with parish names?  Are you putting those in the Place Details field?

 

And now, the rest of the location.  Since the baptism occurred in 1701, the country is obviously wrong, it should be New France and not Canada.

In 1701 "Canada" was a colony of New France, and "Quebec" was a district of Canada.

 

I guess that I could still use Lauzon because the parish was located in the seignory of Lauzon.

 

So should the location be:

Place: Lauzon, Quebec, Colony of Canada, New France

Place Details: St Joseph de la Pointe Levy Parish

 

I'm still trying to sort out all of the geographical name changes in Canada (New France to British North America; province of Quebec splits into Upper and Lower Canada, which in turn unify into the United Province of Canada with Canada East and Canada West) Finally, the Canadian Confederation in 1867 with Ontario and Quebec.

 

Are all of these name changes detailed in one place that anyone can point me to?

 

Thanks,

Rich Crooks

[Vyger]

I work extensively in Parish Names in my 80+% Irish research, why? because the Parish exists now and then but modern place names do not exist back in history and I like to visualize communities in Mapping.

 

This will differ country to country and depending on the most reliable definitions of land parcels so needs to be considered carefully. My opinion is that many users avoid historical land definitions for two reasons, 1, they don't auto geocode and 2, report readers are ignorant of where the place is. My answer is that I manually geocode those places and secondly it's a learning opportunity for the report reader.

 

Parishes in Ireland contain several to many Townland divisions and these are also reliable through history so after careful consideration I decided to enter the Townlands as Place Details within the Parish and this has worked well in my case where I can visualize the sub events within the Parish whether that be a Townland, Church or Cemetery and I work to include all such details to fully understand the Parish, it's history and sub components.

 

Rather than going into a long discussion I will point you to a recent post which has discussed the same issues on the link below.

 

Geocoding and Place notation in Rootsmagic

[mleroux]

Rich, I use the place as the location and the details as the parish or other. For example, for Saint-Joseph-de-Soulanges I record the place as "Les Cèdres" and the detail as "Saint-Joseph-de-Soulanges". In the Place/details Note I include the history and name changes (if any). I try to geo-code everything so I can get a macro view of larger locations (Montreal, Laval, etc.) but then drill down to the parish level.

 

marc