Historical Accuracy for Pre 1776 British America
I’ve been doing extensive research on locations in British America prior to 1776 and I’m trying to represent places as accurately as possible for that period. One thing I’ve noticed is that although we commonly refer to them collectively as “the Thirteen Colonies,” many of the individual jurisdictions were officially styled as provinces, not colonies.
For example, New York’s correct pre‑1776 name was “The Province of New York,” yet I often see people refer to it as “New York Colony.”
For the sake of historical accuracy when documenting a location before 1776, which naming convention should be used?
- Should we use the official governmental name (e.g., Province of New York, Province of Massachusetts Bay) or
- The more generic modern shorthand (e.g., New York Colony, Massachusetts Colony)?
My goal is to correctly label locations in genealogical records for the pre‑Revolutionary period, similar to how we format modern place hierarchies (town → county → state → country).
Thanks
Charles
Answers
-
If you are working in the FamilySearch tree, you will probably want to use the FamilySearch standard places.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/research/places/?text=new%20york&focusedId=107035681 -
It may be worth pointing out that many official names for countries are seldom used - France, for instance, is officially the French Republic (according to Wikipedia), so I wouldn't chase "official" names too much. Short form names tend to be longer lasting as well - France was clearly not "The French Republic" for many centuries.
As suggested above, the FS Standard Placenames need to form the basis, though some degree of tweaking is possible so long as the tweaked version still points to the standard.
2
