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Archiver > APG > 2002-10 > 1035574065


From: Jerry Fitzpatrick <>
Subject: RE: [APG] Re: Place Names
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 14:27:45 -0500
In-Reply-To: <113.199855d6.2aead7a4@aol.com>


Rebecca,

Thanks for your input. Bob Velke and crew should be congratulated for
giving TMG this capability. But, as you say, you have concerns about
exactness.

There are two ways of looking at relationship between coordinates and
locations; in fact, genealogical information in general. One aspect is
the discovery and interpretation of historical records. Because global
positioning technology has only recently become widely available, most
historical records don't use coordinates (even though coordinate systems
have been used since ancient times). Nevertheless, in many cases it's
possible to determine the approximate coordinates of an area based on
additional historical information (e.g. land plats and governmental
records). Whether it's worth the effort depends upon the particular item
in question.

Another aspect of genealogy is that the records we're creating today
become the historical documents of tomorrow. A hundred years from now,
the names of many places will have changed. Some towns and cities will
have been abandoned. County, state, and province boundaries will have
changed. How can genealogists in that time best understand *our*
historical documents?

I think it would help to use descriptions that are the least likely to
change over time. Place names change frequently; latitude and longitude
haven't changed for centuries. I'm not suggesting that place names
should be completely ignored. Instead, I'm saying that the names and
abbreviations we take for granted today probably won't be obvious to
future genealogists.

Case in point: try to find Delhi Wisconsin on a map. My ancestors had
farms there in the mid 1800's, but the town no longer exists. I know it
was in Winnebago County, but without coordinates I would normally have
to examine a variety of documents to determine its location. Fortunately
for me, in this instance, my 80 year old father happens to know
approximately where the town once stood.

Jerry

P.S. Beyond doing future genealogists a favor, I find coordinates
helpful today in locating cemeteries. A GPS in my car lets me drive
right to the coordinates I've entered in, even if I've never been in
that part of the country before. Fortunately, most of the cemeteries in
the United States have been logged by the U. S. Geological Survey and
their coordinates available online.



-----Original Message-----
From: [mailto:]
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 12:22 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [APG] Re: Place Names

Jerry,
I understand that you are making a call for standards - which is
good, but
difficult in the unexact information we deal with in genealogy.
My comment is a little off track but related to your comments about
latitude and longitude coordinates. The program The Master Genealogist

(TMG) has as one of it's input fields for locations the latitude and
longitude coordinates. If I know the coordinates I enter them, but most
of
the time I am not fortunate enough to have that much exactness in my
knowledge of a location. If I did, several of my brick walls would
likely
be solved by now. Although we can pinpoint locations today with
exactness,
the necessary information for an exact location does not often exist in
the
surviving records we deal with.

Rebecca Christensen


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