How do I know the correct place name?
I have been researching church records on Archion, and have many from Schmedenstedt, Peine, Lower Saxony, Prussia. I found duplicates of a few of these on FamilySearch and on ancestry, but they show the place as Klein Ilsede, Ilsede, Peine, Hanover, Prussia, Germany. (Same people and same events)
Which place names should I use? Is it because the name has changed? My policy has been to use the name as it was at the time events happened. Is that wrong?
I'm concerned that it will affect future searches too. FamilySearch doesn't even have a "Lower Saxony/Niedersachsen" option when specifying German states for searches.
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The best practice is to use the geography at the time of the event, so in the 1800s you would use Hannover, for an event today you would use Niedersachsen. A quick internet search doesn't show any name change for Schmedenstedt, so using Gross or Klein Ilsede would not be accurate. As far as the records being labeled as Ilsede in FamilySearch, is it possible that the church there covered multiple communities and the information was extracted as if it were all from Ilsede?
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Thanks for your advice.
These people are from the 1700s-early 1800s.
I was able to find Gross Ilsede, Klein Ilsede, Schmedenstedt, and other towns where I have ancestors on a map. Schmedenstedt is pretty small (today, at least), so it makes sense that it might share a pastor with Klein Ilsede or something like that. So, for people who were in the Schmedenstedt parish books, I should go back and change Klein Ilsede to Schmedenstedt, right?
From the internet, it looks like the district of Peine was only called that after 1866, but was Hanover from 1815 to 1866, and was Brunswick or Hildesheim before that (if I'm understanding correctly).
So a person could live in the same place his whole life, but his birth, marriage and death place names might be all different! I guess that's where Notes come in on the Person Page. Is that how you would handle it?
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Yes, boundaries and jurisdictions can be a bit challenging in Germany. Here's a link to Schmedenstedt from Meyers Gaz -
https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/20729006
and if you go to this page at Compgen.de, you'll find a chart of all the various jurisdictions that Schmedenstedt is/has been a part of over the years.
https://gov.genealogy.net/item/show/object_1155217
If you want to put an entry in the Notes page, that could certainly be helpful to others who view the same record. It might avoid confusion down the road.
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Thank you so much! I was not aware of the Compgen.de site, and it really helps.
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Compgen is wonderful! Especially the section for local heritage books, aka Ortsfamilienbücher - https://ofb.genealogy.net/
And it has a very detailed Wiki section, mostly in German, but that's what Google Translate is for. Explore the other tabs for city directories, gravestones, WWI casualty lists, and more.
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