Having trouble creating historically correct place name for Mississippi Territory
We got a Quality Score note that our person (LV6P-VTV) shown to be born in Alabama in 1814 was not correct and suggested the State of Mississippi from 1798 to present. However, our understanding is it was the Mississippi Territory from 1798 to 1817, then the Territory was split into two states - Alabama and Mississippi. So our only option is to use the Mississippi State designation, when Mississippi Territory would be more appropriate.
Answers
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@MaggieSteward In the list of standardized place names, FamilySearch does have Mississippi as a state in 1798, which as you say is not correct. In my opinion, it's more important to have correct data than to keep the quality checker happy. I would put it in as Territory of Mississippi, United States, which FamilySearch includes as an alternate name for Mississippi.
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This change in how U.S. territories are handled was made in 2022. You can read the explanation here.
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I'm sure most FamilySearch users remain completely baffled by this decision, which effectively treats those who deal with U.S. records differently from those who add records to individuals who resided in other parts of the world.
It seems FamilySearch is quite happily to add worldwide placenames to its database, in a format according to the relative period of time, with this one exception. For example, there is probably no firm reason at all to add a "United Kingdom" suffix - for records relating to its constituent countries - attached for the period from 1801 onwards, yet that apparently does not cause any issues for those whose ancestors lived in England, Scotland, etc. Whereas, those who had ancestors who lived in places before those locations became part of the United States apparently "struggled to understand which place to select when documenting an ancestor's life", which apparently accounts for why this change was made in 2022.
I'm sure there any many FamilySearch patrons who would be delighted to see this decision reversed, in a similar way that those of us who deal primarily with U.K. records would be quite happy for the present formats to be "simplified", especially as there are currently multiple options in the drop-down menu for even an identical format of the location (which effectively means it is irrelevant which one is selected).
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@MaggieSteward @Paul W @Alan E. Brown I was not aware of this change in 2022 as my personal research is all outside of the U.S. After reading the document, I stand by my original statement. The article makes the point that Utah and Utah Territory are similar so combining them into just Utah is less confusing. However, swapping out the state of Mississippi for Alabama—being two different states, is more confusing and would lead future researchers down the wrong path. I'm not sure how well FamilySearch thought this one out before making the change.
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@SerraNola - personally I agree with you. Over-simplification tends to hide rocks just below the surface.
If you want to be really confused on this topic, you should try and understand why FS Standard Places includes "Louisiana Territory, United States" (for 1803-1812) - IIRC part of the answer is that "Louisiana Territory" didn't become the state of Louisiana - it became the Missouri Territory (with statehood in 1821). And I'm sure that the question then occurs to you - what was the state of Louisiana before it became a state? Apparently, it was the "Territory of Orleans". And yes, "Orleans Territory, United States" is also in FS Standard Places. So that's two Territories in Standard Places (at least) because it would have been even more confusing without…
My explanation was dragged from Wikipedia some time ago so may be a little awry in places… 😏
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@Adrian Bruce1 We also use British Colonial America for events before 1776. With Google and Wikipedia it's not hard to follow the history of changes to place names and jurisdictions. As a researcher you are lost without a timeline to know where to look for records at the time an event most likely occurred. I vote for accuracy over simplification.
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