How do we treat places whose location was disputed at the time of the event?

+10 votes
239 views
Wikitree's policy is to name a location as it would've been called at the time of the event. What if the location's jurisdiction was disputed at the time of the event -- which version should we use?

The specific example I'm thinking of is an ancestor who died in a U.S. Civil War battle in a southern state. I can't bring myself to put "Confederate States of America" as the location, even though most the people in that area would have considered that the country they were located in. (Especially since said ancestor was in the Union Army; my guess is that he'd have considered his death place part of the USA.) But would CSA actually be correct under WT standards? Or would we still call it USA, since that's the side that ultimately won?
in Policy and Style by Sharon Casteel G2G6 Pilot (162k points)
As a Yankee who resides in one of the states that seceded during the Civil War, I submit that many Southerners would identify the battle location with the state, not with the CSA. Many Southerners contend that the war was fought to preserve the rights of the individual states -- not to create a separate nation.
Interesting question.  Did the Confederate States of America exist as a "legal" country. This is very simular to when did the United States of America come into existance?

Since the CSA "lost" the war, one might make a case for using USA.  However, Wikitree policy could be interpreted in favor of listing CSA.  Additionally, since certain records are found through using CSA you could make a case for CSA.  Then again, most of the records and documents are likely going to be found in the County of the time in today's USA.

I would use USA but make a notation in the biogaphy if your ancestor identified with CSA.

To put a modern spin on the question: How about an event in Crimea right now?

I would say "using their convention not ours" would mean using the name the person themselves would most likely use: a citizen of Crimea (which, legally or not, has exercised self-determination) or a Russian would probably use:

Республика Крым, Кры́мский федера́льный о́круг, Российская Федерация (Crimean Republic, Crimean Federal District, Russian Federation)

A Ukranian soldier, a documented pro-Ukraine supporter, or a member of the international community at large would probably use the Ukrainian version.

Автономна Республіка Крим, Україна (Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine)

(Apologies if the cyrillic foreign language names are wrong - it's all Greek to me)

Yikes Rob!

Hmm...well we could document locations using GPS coordinates, but I believe even these have changed (minutely) with newer datasets.  I believe the Clinton administration removed the block on GPS acuracy that allowed for the GPS explosion we have today.  And how acurate were Latitude and Longitude over time and among cartographers?

All of which begs the question, "What is the purpose of documenting the location of an event?"
If you want to go there, how about the question of what the lat/lon coordinates of a place WOULD HAVE BEEN THEN?  If we're going to use high precision values of the coordinates then the shift of tectonic plates would have made the place different - literally - even a hundred years ago.
I realize this is an older topic, but it is one that has caused me quite a bit of frustration for decades. My ancestor road block has fallen into a hole somewhere because most information I find on him lists him in a county that was not formed at the time of his birth. I have ran into this many times with other people as well. I often find people listed in a state or county that the borders have shifted over the last 3 centuries in the U.S., which makes it difficult to know where to go to for further research.

Using my roadblock as an example, James Shields, Shields-1830, is often listed as birth location Adam County, PA. According to family documents and military records, as well as headstone, his date of birth is April 14, 1733. On January 22, 1800, Adam County was entered into legislation for formation as a County within 2 presently formed counties. If you pick a spot, say Strabann Township where his father-in-law's will was recorded in 1795, it was part of York County until the formation of Adams. At one point, it was also part of Cumberland and Lancaster Counties, yet I repeatedly find him listed over and over again with birth location as Adam County, PA. At one point, an area of present day Adam County was also part of Virginia!

The next point to search under is the place he enlisted during the Revolutionary War, which was Chambersburg, in the newly formed county of Cumberland County, PA on the date of May 26, 1777. The city of Chambersburg in PA has a rich military history dating back to the formation and settlement by William Penn, and has been located on the Mason-Dixon Line dispute documentations in the Maryland Colony, as part of Chester, Lancaster, Cumberland Counties, but is now the county seat in Franklin County.

From this point on, I can trace James Shields through the battles he fought in, census, land warrants, and military pension as well as documentation of his endeavors in the Indiana Gazette, including his voting precinct. I can locate many individuals born around the same time frame that could be possible brothers or cousins from that same 400 mile radius, but without a finer point of location there are a lot of James, Robert, William and John Shields within that radius! A Robert and John Shields are well documented both by DNA and records, as these 2 brothers became well-established citizens who's parentage was recorded and became literate in their older years. My James apparently did not, nor was his wife, as everything signed was made by 'Mark', tho his younger children were. James moved to Western PA, and John stayed in that area with Robert settling in VA, marrying a prominent family and becoming the father of a Senator. The direct descendants of those 2 brothers have a proven DNA trail to Ireland's James Shields the Elder who's family was disbanded and scattered by Cornwall during the English Campaign, with sons Robert and James captured and enslaved to Barbados, later escaping and making their way to PA in the late 1600's.

So... which direction do you turn when so many, including Family Search and LDS, claim a birth location in an area that did not exist during the dates also claimed? Better yet, how do you end the misinformation out there by so many who keep 'copying' it over and over without digging deeper? I grit my teeth every time I see one of the many I am researching falling into these gaps. I have a Dunlap, Whitacre, Mock and McSwiney ancestor that have fallen into that same elusive time v. location warp that no one bothered to look at a map during the time frame they list for accuracy! With these people, I always list location as uncertain or possibly thus or so in WikiTree, and cross my fingers someone can come up with a better way to dig a little deeper!

4 Answers

+5 votes
I would say the example a bit broad. I would list city, co, and or state. If you wish, you can discuss the country dispute in the bio if it is important to your narrative for this ancestor
by Living Knight G2G6 Mach 3 (37.4k points)
I think this is a little bit too US-centric. WikiTree wants to be world-wide and locations should be entered equally for all locations, whether they are in the present day USA or any other country. As Rob's example shows it's international, it happens today, and it happened all along throughout history. Most European changes of sovereignty came about by war, there were facts on the ground often years before treaties established new borders. Just another example: The Princebishopric of Paderborn was an independent political entity in the Holy Roman Empire. It ended de facto in 1801 with the occupation by Prussia, but became de jure part of Prussia in 1803.

I do agree, though, that these facts need to be discussed in the biography.
+4 votes

Following Merriam-Webster, a civil war is "a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country". (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civil%20war)

To my knowledge the CSA did not get diplomatically recognized by any foreign government as an independent country.

Would that not make the proper location "United States of America", with the CSA best explained in the biography?

by Helmut Jungschaffer G2G6 Pilot (591k points)
+1 vote

One could take the view that a researcher is looking for where the records, grave, or whatever, is located now. For instance county boundaries in the USA in almost every state have changed over time. But when searching for records about someone born in  what is now Putnam County, New York but was at the time the record was created was in Dutchess County, New York, a researcher would have to go to Dutchess County for the record. But if he or she wanted to drive there (e.g. to visit a graveyard) then he or she would need to look for Putnam County on the map.

by Laurie Keller G2G6 (7.7k points)
+2 votes
I don't like this policy to begin with. It might work in places and periods with strong centralized states but wouldn't work in the patchwork border-gore my ancestors came from. There's a story about a man who lived in 5 or six different ''countries" and he never moved from his house of birth. Austrian-Netherlands, French Empire, Kingdom of Holland, United Kingdom of the Netherlands, Belgium and Kingdom of the Netherlands. This was just a succession of states within 66 years.

Preferred practice in these parts is to use the current place and the ISO standards of administrative divisions 2nd level and current country. If you want to know what country it was at the time, look at the current place and the year and look it up on the internet or in a Historic Atlas.

It's also a lot less error prone and neutral in my opinion.
by Jules van Laar G2G Crew (510 points)

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