Should parish names be included in location names?

Question

In the case of places of birth, marriage and death based on parish records - eg in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, should the location names include the name of the parish?

If there were multiple small towns in the parish, the town is actually a smaller geographic unit than the parish and the place of birth and death probably occurred in the town where the person lived, which might be a different town than where the parish church was located. So in those situations, maybe use the town of residence (if known) and omit the parish name?

But large towns and cities had multiple parishes, so the parish was a smaller geographic unit and indicated a particular neighborhood in the town/city. In those cases, include both the parish and the town?

Comments

England Project already settled their place names and we are still adding the Category info box to the locations.

Needless to say, I'm not for this change at this time, Chase.

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What change? What is the England Project's position on the issue?

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Are you a project member? If you are, you can ask in the forum.

I thought you were asking to change location names to include the parish. Pardon me if I misunderstood! I guess I think too much in terms of categories! ;-)

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Natalie, it would be great if the England project shared its position here (and on the relevant project page) so non-project members could also be informed of the "best practice" being used by the project. Thanks.

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Ah, I see the England project has answered this below. Great.

EDIT: Oops; they actually didn't answer the question; still seeking an answer.

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Thank you Natalie. This question recurs regularly, almost as often as Baptismal Date.

The decision was made. We did the Category Information Boxes. (In my case, over 3000).

V. frustrating.

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Isn't the question about location fields rather than categories? (it's also from.2019)

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It's incredible to me that the England project refuses to disclose here what their practice is. We don't want to argue about it; we just want to know what their practice is.

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It took me awhile to find it but they do have an editing guidelines help page. 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:England_Project_-_Profile_Standards#Locations

Answer 1

This makes sense for marriage records, if the marriage was in a church. Knowing the church ( or parish or religious denomination) is a clue to where to look for marriage records, especially for larger towns.

In my desktop genealogy software, I always add the name of the church/parish, along with the town, for baptisms and marriages. I also record the name of the church with the source citation.

For deaths and burials I think it is a bit ambiguous. Church records are often not precise about the place of death or burial. I do not add the  church/parish name to these records, but do record it with the source citation. In my software I always record the name of the cemetery for burials if it is known.

Comments

You are correct that knowing the parish is very helpful in searching for records, but that doesn't technically make it a geographical location. In a way, parishes are like election districts. In a very broad sense. Definitely you should include parish and church information in the text of a profile to assist other researchers.

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In a sensible world, this data would be in a searchable database, not filed by parish. Cornwall OPC is a great example of how to do it properly.

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Cornwall is impressive!

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@ Lucy -- in some places the Parish is the equivalent of Shire, or County, so is very much a geographical (and political) designation.

I grew up in such an area, then moved to where they were Shires instead .. and now live in a County.

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Even in the United States, Louisiana has parishes that are what I believe other states would call counties.  These are very much part of the geographical location in that state and - I believe - have no political or religious connotation.

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Louisiana’s modern parishes (equivalent to counties in other states) had their origin in the Catholic ecclesiastical parishes. Wikipedia has a good article on Louisiana’s system.

The modern Louisiana case is thus different from that in the original question.

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When I find a record for the person, I copy it to my desktop software and copy the Location to my location field. Since I have found record discrepancies often, and I don't know a big from a little parish, and have to look up many of the communities, I'm not going to start modifing what it recorded, right or wrong. Many times I have tried to find the same record again without success. I assume that what was transcribed was important.

Answer 2

Many people in england were farmers and thus lived in the rural area, which means they did not live in towns so the parish name really was is the only thing to use. I use the parish name for pretty much all of my ancestors from Devon and Cornwall.

Answer 3

I am answering on behalf of the England Project.

This was discussed at length when the project was being set up.

There are numerous hamlets which were parts of a parish and religious boundaries may not directly relate to geographical ones.

If you want to propose changes you need to be a member of the project.  There's a lot of discussion threads in their Google group.

Comments

Chase is already a member of the England Project.

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"This was discussed at length when the project was being set up."

So what is the England Project's position? I'm not necessarily trying to change anything, just asking for advice on best practices.

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Perhaps England project could make its Google discussion group view only for non-members so that those of us who touch upon the England project but are not members can view your discussions and conclusions. And I certainly hope whatever conclusions you reach are reflected in the project help pages. Thanks!

Answer 4

Yes.  In cities and boroughs, I'd give the parish, which is often significant.

In the case of large parishes, I'd generally leave out the parish, except for disambiguating places with the same name.  It's not an independent variable.  It can be indicated by a category or mentioned in the bio to save somebody looking it up.

Comments

I have a lot of profiles in three parishes where knowing the parish is easy but knowing the settlement is not:

Nunkeeling near Hornsea in East Yorkshire, England is named after a priory which disappeared at the Reformation almost 500 years ago leaving only a hamlet of five dispersed households.  About half the population live in the village of Bewholme 2 miles away which has no church. The rest live in farmsteads and small hamlets of five or so households.  Most of these people for 200 years have their records in the Nunkeeling Parish Register, which rarely mentions where they live. Even census records often do not help.

Wharram Percy is a similar but even more extreme case: The village of that name disappeared completely and about a third of the population live in Thixendale about 4 miles away and some of the farmsteads are 8 miles away.

Beverley Minster Parish is quite different: more than half the population have always lived in or very near the town, but the rest live up to 5 miles away in settlements  which are not even a single block: sometimes the baptisms, marriages and burials tell us where the people lived, but by no means always.  Since census records became relevant we can usually work this out, but  before 1840 we can only guess.

In all three cases I am often forced to use the parish as the location unless I am prepared to use an even vaguer name.

It may make sense to keep the parish location to the biography in many cases, but not in all.

Answer 5

Parish records are important.Many people of certain names

are prevalent in England and elsewhere.Also there Religeon

is of importance.

Answer 6

I completed the Orphan Trail and found that parish records and persons in the various parish record offices were extremely helpful. I invariably added the parish when records listed locations for births, marriages and in some cases burials. This is particularly relevant to 17th & 18th century records. All of my trail work was done in Cornwall and a prior answer mentioned how awesome Cornwall is relevant to their records.

As genealogists, it is incumbent on us to provide as much information as possible when developing and sourcing profiles. There are circumstances in which the parish may not be in the geographic region. Did they marry in the geographic region, then settle in the parish? Were they baptized in the parish then move to a surrounding region. In these cases, we should list the parish and mention in the biography the possibility of a move to the surrounding region.

In the case of 17th century Cornwall, in addition to finding christening, marriage and on occasion burial records, the parish records office made available the history of the time (e.g. the English Civil War ca. 1642) and listed members who had to take oaths to the Protestant church. There were names of my profiles who took that oath. This information was included in the profile (more evidence that the person being worked on is the actual person) along with the URL that provided this information.

The England Group and the Orphan Trail provide and support tremendous learning opportunities for the subtle ways in which sourcing is done in England. For those of us in the U.S., who are working on families who immigrated from England in the early 1600s, we can see how English Common Law influenced our birth, death, marriage and probate(!) records. I revisited my 5X GGF's probate record from 1759 last night and recognized the similarities to some of the wills I read (including personal and real property listed in BPS) doing my Orphan Trail in the 18th century.

Bottom line, I believe parish information should be included if parishes and parish records are so recognized. If need be, perhaps the England Group leadership can add a codicil to their documentation to incorporate use of parish records.

Answer 7

See under Locations in the English Profile Standard.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:England_Project_-_Profile_Standards#Locations

Answer 8

Chase,

Perhaps I can help vis-a-vis the Wales Project. The answer is no, we don't include parishes in Categories. No problem about the Parish going in the Biography, indeed we would welcome it.

Steve Bartlett

Team Leader for the Wales Category Team

Answer 9

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland,
You will find we use the Parish all the time
Except if naming population centres
When we drop it, don't ask the reason why!

(To the tune of Galway Bay)

Comments

P.S. Just to be clear, we use Civil Parishes not ecclesiastical.