Standardzing places
You are supposed to standardize the place. Utah was not a state until 1896; it was a territory.
Used to be that the Utah Territory could be standardized. How to go about getting FamilySearch to let the Utah Territory be standardized?
Answers
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@Julee Hicks - if you feel (as I would) that you need to have the word "Territory" in the placename, then you can exploit the way that the standardisation process is designed to work in FamilySearch.
Firstly, for simplicity, set the entry up with the standard value of "Utah, United States" - as you say, this standardises on the state. Then, insert the word "Territory" into the displayed placename while leaving the standardised name untouched. (Do not click the offered standard values). You will end up with a displayed name of "Utah Territory, United States", that is standardised on "Utah, United States".
It works, of course, on more than Utah. This method also allows you to insert "County" in other placenames, for instance. As I said, this is the way that the standardisation process is designed to work in FamilySearch.
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The pedant in me is very much bothered by the decision to dumb down geographical and historical information. The Utah Territory was much bigger than present-day state of Utah.
On a similar subject that annoys me: The Austro-Hungarian Empire is not a standardized choice. For most of my relatives, I know they came from Galicia-Austria. But there are some where I don't know if it's present day Austria or present day Hungary or neither.
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Because place names are so complicated, because it is going to take decades to get the Places Database to contain all historical names for any one spot on the globe, because the Places Database will never have as fine of detail as some users may wish to use, and because various users wish to use different "genealogical standards" for place names, the ability to enter a display name that is then linked to a "dumb downed" standard is one of the great feature of Family Tree.
Yes, Utah Territory was much larger than the state of Utah ever was. That is why some places in Nevada have standards that do have them in Utah:
Whether one uses the artificial standard promulgated years ago for use on paper forms with limited space of "Deep Hole, Carson, Utah, United States," or the more complete, less ambiguous, full form of "Deep Hole, Carson County, Utah Territory, United States of America" is up to the user. As Adrian explained, this second form in entered in Family Tree and standardized like this:
What you type in is what you want other users to read and you can be as specific as possible so that those other uses know exactly what you mean. The Standardized Data is simply a textual code representing a specific latitude and longitude. The website probably uses the latitude and longitude to compare places more than it ever uses the text.
Likewise, since the latitude and longitude of a place is set by the highest level in the place name, not the lowest, you can enter places like this just fine:
However, I can see that if you are entering only "Austrio-Hungarian Empire" as the full place name because nothing else is known about the person's residence, you would not want to deceive other users or the programming routine by linking it to the wrong country. The Places Database is very incomplete but the team in charge does try to get requested additions added. You should request the addition of Austro-Hungarian Empire, along with its multitude of variant names, as a stand-alone place with an explain that it is important to have it for the situations where it is going to be added all by itself as the full place name without any lower level place to clarify whether the current place is in Austria or Hungary.
You will probably have to e-mail the Places Authority Team directly so you can fully explain the issue and since I don't think we can request countries threw the Suggest A New Place link. You can find their e-mail in this article: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-request-a-new-place-in-the-database-of-standardized-places
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My screen shot from the Places database got marked as restricted. I asked for a review so it might show up. To see the image, go here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/research/places/?pagesize=100&text=12602242 then zoom out to see where the place is in Nevada.
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Just as an incidental re Austria-Hungary for those reading this without the background. (I hope any Austria-Hungary experts will forgive me! This isn't directed at you!)
I have no experience of relatives in that area but do remember once advocating Austria-Hungary as a standardised place. However, a former denizen of this community, who had experience in Hungarian matters, persuaded me that it wasn't that simple. Essentially, there was no such country for genealogical purposes as Austria-Hungary - the laws, customs and practices relevant to our research were different between the two - perhaps most tellingly for me, a citizen of Austria was not automatically a citizen of Hungary or vice versa.
However, I take on board what @Nyx773 says and would agree that Austria-Hungary should be a standard placename along with whatever provinces etc that straddle the two - but no lower.
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