G2G: Location auto-suggest

Question

I was looking at the death location for an ancestor, and discovered that the location auto-suggest for Utah didn't give Utah Territory as an option, and it gave the starting date of plain "Utah" as 1858. Utah became a territory in 1850 and became a state in 1896, so the 1858 date doesn't match anything that I can see. I can of course just type in Utah Territory instead of accepting the suggestion of just Utah, but is there a process for suggesting changes to the auto-suggests?

Eta: I looked again, and the Utah suggestion date is 1848, not 1858. I must have needed to clean my glasses. Still not the right date though.

Comments

Hi Jen. If you wish, you can make suggestions for the FamilySearch Places Tool which Ros refers to. There is a "Suggest a New Place" link there. You need to be logged in to FamilySearch.

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I will check that out, thank you.

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Ah, sadly, that tool can't be used for anything bigger than a city. "Larger parent places cannot be added, such as county, country, province, region, or state."

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Humph. Noted. Thanks for trying and reporting back, Jen.

Answer 1

I am answering my own question because I found both what happened and why it can't be fixed. FS deliberately removed U.S. state territories from the location options.

"In the past, FamilySearch Places contained separate entries for both U.S. states and the historic U.S. territories that shared their same names. For example, "Utah (state; 1896-today)" was one entry, and "Utah Territory (1850-1896)" was another. The distinction was accurate, but some users struggled to understand which place to select when documenting an ancestor's life.

In 2022, a project was initiated to simplify this scenario. Going forward, 2 similar place-names such as "Utah (state; 1896-Today)" and "Utah Territory (1850-1896)" will be combined into 1: Utah (state; 1850-today). Historical notes or alternate names for both places will appear in the new place's description.

The project is currently underway and should be completed sometime in March of 2022."

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/when-did-familysearch-combine-us-states-and-their-historic-territories-in-familysearch-places

Comments

Jen, you are not required to use the FS locations.

Hundreds of them are inaccurate and not correct, I never use them.

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Of course, I thought if anyone else was wondering about the weird vanishing of territories from the list, that the link might be helpful.

Answer 2

The auto-suggest list you are referring to is supplied (and maintained) by FamilySearch.  You do not have to take its suggestions - in fact, I have mine switched off! - and they are suggestions only.

Comments

Yep, it's just that this particular instance even the one available suggestion isn't quite accurate, which I hadn't run into before.