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From: Lee Kaiwen <>
Subject: [GENBOX] Colony or State?
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:01:31 +0800


I've recently been rethinking the way I record places vis-a-vis colonial
times. I've never been consistent in this, and it's coming back to bite me.

Example: I have an ancestor who, in 1653 moved from Roxbury in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony to Pequot in the Colony of Connecticut. In my
experience, it seems to be the almost universal practice -- at least of
the amateur genealogists the flood the Internet -- of recording these
two places as Roxbury, MA, USA and New London, CT, USA, respectively,
but in fact, those names are anachronistic. Pequot didn't change its
name to New London until sometime in the 1670s, and of course neither
the USA nor the states of MA and CT would exist for more than a century.

On the other hand, very few people (I suspect even including residents
of New London) have any idea what or where Pequot was, and you won't
find it on any modern map. So, does it help or hurt to translate places
into modern equivalents? The purist in me says record 'em as they were.
The pragmatist says it's too much work.

So, what do you do?

-CJ

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