Rural locations with Lot No. and Concession No. updates
How do I handle historical info that refer to Lot Numbers and Concession numbers .. but the rural area is now part of a larger city which has now given them a street name and address number?
Answers
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@Dave Holzschuh Are you referring to a particular U.S. State or a particular country/world region? In general, my opinion is that you have to do a little geographical/historical research on the place and the time period where the original document came from. Ex. here in Utah several neighborhoods have been swallowed up into West Valley City. In the 1970's and before, these neighborhoods were Granger, Hunter, etc. so in order to find particular branches of a family in 2025, you'd probably want to know their street addresses as well as their neighborhood. I'd look at county and city records, too because to me, "upper eastside" means east of 1300 East and north of 2100 South in Salt Lake City and to someone else "the westside" means the "wrong side of the tracks" 🤣You'd think by now we should all know better than that!
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@Dave Holzschuh - assuming that I understand your concerns correctly, I would ignore any later street and place names, because I am one of those who believe that events etc should be given the details that applied at the time of the event. Those won't change whereas "today's details" may be different tomorrow.
Now, having said that, it's surely our responsibility as researchers to write stuff that is meaningful so while the placename for an event ought to be (in my mind) the contemporary name, it's important to put somewhere in a note that in 2025 the area in question is known as xyz. And the year is important in that bit because if it changes in 2026, you are under no obligation to go back and revise the name.
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