G2G: Is Province of Massachusetts Bay a thing?

Question

This question arises because of the WT: News email message recently received which does not address the Province name for events between 1692 and 1776

Wills in particular often contain Province of Massachusetts Bay for the period 14 May 1692  to 4 July 1776.

• New! Three location-related improvements this week:
  1. Birth and death locations are now weighting factors in your suggested matches when creating new profiles.
  2. Some abbreviations (e.g. MA and Mass. for Massachusetts) and translations (e.g. Sverige and Sweden) now match each other equally.
  3. Suggested place names are now weighted by date, e.g. Massachusetts Bay Colony will be suggested before Massachusetts, United States for a birth location if the birth date is before 1776.

ref: https://historyofmassachusetts.org/province-massachusetts-bay/

"Charter of the Province:

The charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay was issued by King William and Queen Mary on October 7, 1691. The charter took effect when Sir William Phips arrived in Boston with the new charter on Saturday, May 14, 1692.

In addition to converting the Massachusetts Bay Colony into a royal colony, the charter also absorbed Plymouth Colony, the Province of Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia into the province."

Answer 1

Province of Massachusetts Bay is indeed a real thing and it's the correct name for 1692 to 1776. Efforts to enforce its use for that period instead of "Massachusetts Bay Colony" have been frustrated by the fact that the dropdown menus that WikiTree gets from FamilySearch use "Massachusetts Bay Colony."

Comments

And I've attempted, no less than 5 times, to politely explain this to the folks at FamilySearch (with sources). It's like talking to a wall. They don't "feel it's necessary to make a change." I wonder if they'd feel the same if we suggested "Province of Utah"?

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It's a shame that WikiTree picked "Massachusetts Bay Colony" as a good example of how to name pre-1776 places for the thread https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/2060312/did-you-hear-about-the-location-related-search-improvements