What can we do about places that have changed affiliation?

Question

As we all know, West Virginia was part of Virginia before 1863. Is it possible to identify places as "Charleston, Kanawha, Virginia (West Virginia after 1863)?

Michigan Territory originally extended beyond the current "hand and mitten" pair of shapes to encompass what became Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the eastern portions of North Dakota and South Dakota. Thus one could describe someoneas born in "Dubuque, Michigan Territory, United States" in 1835 but dying in 1901 in Dubuque, Iowa while staying in or near the same place,  Following the birthplace one should have (Iowa since...).

This could also apply to locations that have changed names due to changes of sovereignty such as "Stettin, Pommern, Prussia" to "Szcecin, Poland after 1945" by recognizing the change in the place name after the original name with the time..

Answer 1

Paul, I can imagine that it would be beyond possible to develop capability of identifying places by both contemporaneous and future names.  WikiTree's policy is to identify them in the data section in the name and language that the people living there in that time would have known them.

The way I deal with this situation is to include the information in the biography, for example:

Name was born in 1900 in Village, Town, District, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire.