Baltimore, Md independant city?

Question

Is Baltimore Md an independent city? I mean it does not belong to any county? How do we address this in Wikitree? Baltimore, Independent city, Maryland, USA?

Answer 1

It does not belong to a county now, but until 1851 it was part of Baltimore County.  Baltimore County covered most of settled Maryland in the early colonial years, so if you are looking for records you need to look at a county formation map.

Answer 2

It's an independent city separate from the county.  Maybe just Baltimore City, Maryland, United States?  (As opposed to, for example, Towson, Baltimore County, Maryland, United States.)  I have a lot of family from Baltimore so I'll be curious to see what other people think so I can make sure I'm doing it right.

Answer 3

Yes it is. There are categories on WikiTree for the city under both "Baltimore, Maryland" and "Baltimore City, Maryland," as well as for the county as "Baltimore County, Maryland". I'm not sure if both entries for the city is intended or not.

All incorporated cities in Virginia are independent of their former counties, even if they have the same name or serve as the county seat. For example, Roanoke, Virginia is not part of Roanoke County, Virginia, nor is Salem, Virginia - which is the seat of Roanoke County.

Since Virginia has so many independent cities, it seems a bit more organized on WikiTree. The independent cities are treated as county equivalents and therefore the city name is followed by a comma and the state name. The word city is only included if the name of the city if it is part of its name (like city in Kansas City). I couldn't find any examples of that in Virginia. Confusingly, there are two counties with theses names: "James City" and "Charles City" which are counties, not cities. They're categorized "James City County, Virginia" and "Charles City County, Virginia" on WikiTree.

Answer 4

Speaking as a resident, the local usage is that Baltimore means Baltimore city.  If you want to refer to the County, you say Baltimore County.  I live in Baltimore County, but we border on Baltimore. Functionally, County is part of the name, i.e. Baltimorecounty, Howardcounty, Carrollcounty, PrinceGeorgescounty, etc.  The options given when you go to enter a place name in WikiTree leave the word County out.  We generally know what is meant (except in the case of Baltimore), but we smile patronizingly, knowing that this is all being done by outsiders. who, while not really ignorant, don't know their way around that well either!

Since there are excess categories at the moment, I would suggest keeping Category: Baltimore, meaning the city (which is indeed independent of the county, the only place in Maryland that is) and keeping Category: Baltimore County, which is how everyone refers to it.  And get rid of Category: Baltimore City, since nobody says that.

Comments

Thanks everybody for the explanations. Now that I read all of them if all makes sense. Jack i appreciate heading from a resident's point of view.

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Re-reading this 4 years later -- forget that I said "nobody says Baltimore City" -- I'm now pastor (until June 30) of "St.John's United Methodist Church - Baltimore City"!

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Thanks for replying to this message Pastor and thanks for clarifying it.

Phil 4:13