verify place names
I tried this activity out, read the so-called instructions first, and …. I just do not get it! It gives me a person's name with no helpful info attached - and a list of places with the same name in different states. Apparently, I am supposed to figure out which place is the right one. Well - how am I supposed to know !! I am trying my level best to "get with the new program" but my patience is running out fast. This used to be satisfying, meaningful, and interesting to me and I felt like I was getting pretty good at it. Now I have nothing. Thank you, FS.
Answers
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I tried the place names once and gave up because all I got were "Cherokee Nation", and nothing indicated which state or part of a state it was. I tried going by dates and googling where the Cherokee Nation was at the time, but still couldn't determine which state. I've been sticking with Full Name Review, but you have to get used to how to do that because there are no instructions given. You can find instruction if you look it up, but still you have to play with it to figure it out.
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Place Name Review is pretty accurate with places and it's 9/10 times the first one listed. Google is also handy. There's also this from here:
Consult an online map. Often the unverified place is close to a larger, well-known place that exists in our database and that can be used as an alternative.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/help-with-verify-places
The majority of the Cherokee nation, pre-Trail of Tears, was located in Tennessee, North and South Carolina and Georgia. Post-Trail of Tears and up to the present, the majority of the Cherokee Nation is in Oklahoma @barbaragailsmith11 -
Yes, that's what I found in my googling, but you have to put one state to have a standardized place.
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Post-1850, it's generally Oklahoma.
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Yeah, but some of the records were before that. I'll just let others do the place names.
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@barbaragailsmith1 - I'm on the wrong side of the Atlantic to have direct experience of working with this, but there is a Standard Placename of "Indian Territory, United States", which applies to 1819-1907. No need to include the name of a current state.
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@PATRICIABAUMANN4 Regarding your concern that you have no way to tell what a place to be. There is no need to be frustrated by this. That is the entire reason there is a SKIP button. Some of these are completely unidentifiable without in depth research. You doing that research is not the intent of the program.
For example on this one:
There are no clues as to which Carver this could possibly be. Going to her Family Tree profile:
There is no other information, no family relationships anymore (some one deleted a relationship which I have not checked yet), and no sources. So changing this Carver to anything has a very high risk of making the profile worse! It is very important to just skip this one.
If you run through an entire set of ten place names in about one minute because none of them have enough information to standardize the place name, that is perfectly acceptable and is the right thing to do.
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@PATRICIABAUMANN4 Here is another example of why this is actually a rather complex activity which if you approach as a fascinating intellectual challenge can be fun rather than frustrating:
At first glance, this looks really confusing! Born in the Marshall Islands? Lived in Finland the same year he died in "Bennington"? Here again you just have to go to his Family Tree profile:
Here things become clear. His birthplace of Knox was linked to an incorrect standard that included Marshall Islands. His residence place of Bennington Township was linked to an incorrect standard in Finland. His death place was never standardized.
There is a single source for all information on his profile an Ohio death record. Looking at the index and the microfilm image, shows that this death place is Bennington Township, Licking County, Ohio.
So I can now fix the entry:
This changes his Family Tree profile from:
to:
Notice that this did not change the displayed place name. That is not the goal of this activity and it is not our place to do that. It is not even our place to go into that profile and update the standards which are incorrectly linked (even though my fingers are itching to fix those Marshall Island and Finland problems). That is the job of Family Tree users working on this family.
If what I have show here is not your idea of fun or of a useful way to spend your time, then you probably should find other ways to contribute your time such as the name review projects.
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@Gordon Collett said:
… Notice that this did not change the displayed place name. That is not the goal of this activity and it is not our place to do that. It is not even our place to go into that profile and update the standards which are incorrectly linked (even though my fingers are itching to fix those Marshall Island and Finland problems). That is the job of Family Tree users working on this family. …
(My emphasis). That's an important summary. The whole point of this activity is to fix missing standardised placenames. No more, no less. It's not to do research on the profiles by updating the displayed name (even if my fingers would also twitch to fix!)
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@Adrian Bruce1 Because I am fascinated with names and places in the US, I too am very frustrated because I think I read somewhere in Opportunities an invite to make changes in the Person Record but, understanding that takes research I don't try it at this point. Again "but" I do look at the person vitals to see if there's something there in spite of the No Life Events and there often is; however looking at the Person Vitals puts that name into the list of People I'm Following which distracts me even further so I end up accomplishing very little for the amount of time invested. Since very often, none of the choices in the FS list of possibles makes any sense to me I've quit doing name places - a real shame because I'm very good at US geography and researching (its an OCD-post-stroke-recovery thing).
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Just looking at a person's profile should never put that person on your list you are following. Only clicking on the following star will do that. Do you mean your Recents list? I agree that is a bit of a problem because I think everyone on your Recents list is included in the hinting routine. However, you can remove them from the Recents list by clicking the Edit button then the trash can icon:
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@maryellenstevensbarnes1 - I'd agree with Gordon on this. When I check someone's Profile for clues about (say) which London might be referred to, they appear in my Recents list. As a result, as soon as I've finished a pass of 10, I discipline myself to go into my Recents list and remove the unwanted profiles while I have a chance of remembering whose profile I looked at.
It doesn't matter too much usually if I'm removing genuine relatives since I can usually get back to them somehow.
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@Adrian Bruce1 @Gordon Collett Thanks to you both for your comments, my brain is really slow at putting 2 and 2 together 😎I'll check on that Recents list —
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This is a very insightful comment, and points to the importance of selecting a place name that was in effect for the era in which the individual lived. A similar example is Mexico, which in 1812 was a province called "New Spain" encompassing México, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Veracruz & Yucatán and so records of individuals living at that time would be labeled accordingly.
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Lots of times the non standard given is similar to "Cherokee Nation" or even just the tribal name —when this happens Standard Place name of "Indian Territory, United States", never comes up in the choices and my memory bank is limited yo choosing from what I see in front of me 🤨
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