Location Importance

Question

Not sure if we are supposed to add locations of our own knowledge to what is already listed. Maybe this is meaningless but is an interesting story.

Family Interveiw: Aunt Bess age 89 was interviewed by great grand niece about grandfather James M. (1840-1916 SC)  Bess said "He was a farmer and had a gin and a general store.  It was about 5 Miles from Hill's Creek.  Aunt Jean wrote: the old store was about five miles from Hills Creek"

Hills creek was known by early maps and ran near Big Lynches Creek where the name "Blakeney's Store" was shown in a 1790.

The Truth: Old Store Twp., settled by the Blakeney's was eventually the name of first settlement in the area.  By 1900 or 1910 its name was changed to Pageland and censuses used the new one.   

In our list of Locations there is only Pageland.  I hope we are allowed to add new locations?  I hope you enjoyed this fun untangling. 

Comments

 I agree, but you may find someone will come along and correct the location.  

Answer 1

The "Place name suggestions" are just that; only suggestions. You're totally free to enter other locations. You may even disable the place name suggestions entirely by clicking the "hide place name suggestions" link below the Death place field in the Edit screen of an already entered profile. A lot of persons prefer to let their browser store frequently used place names.

See also: "Help: Location Fields" which should explain it all in detail.

Answer 2

As Leif said, you don't have to use the suggested locations. As insurance against helpful people correcting your location, you might consider adding a note and a source about the historical name.

Comments

There's no reason why anybody should go ahead and change a place name if it's well-formed and conforms to standards on the regional and national levels.

I'm entering custom names all the time, usually down to a very detailed level. No one have tried to change them, but then expertice about Norwegian location names is probably not that widespread about here.

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Leif and Herbert, thank you both so much, I had no idea.  I'm stuck with "doing it the right way"   Very nice suggestions.