Sunday, September 30, 2012

FTM2012 - Place Name - Independent City

This is to share something learned today.

While cleaning up my Place Names, moving to the new format, I took a moment to find out what I was having an issue with Baltimore, Maryland and Richmond Virginia. Each time, I need to use the "county" call Independent City.

Once Independent City was chosen, the place names and locations worked as they should. Up until I looked into this, I had thought that at least Baltimore was within Baltimore County. Then I ran into Richmond, Virginia, then I had to look this up.

My choice was do a Google Search, which really didn't help, looking a city websites. Then I looked at Wikipedia. Reading about Baltimore and Richmond really didn't help, specifically, so I did a search for "Independent City". Here is a link to what Wikipedia has to say:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_city_%28United_States%29#Other_states

 That told be why Baltimore and Richmond use "Independent City" as the "county". It very helpful when I have places in Baltimore County.

An independent city is not the same as a consolidated city-county. This points out why Philadelphia will be included in the County of Philadelphia.

Lesson Learned: Check out terms used within the Place Name Authority of the Family Tree Maker program.

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Copyright © 2012 by H R Worthington

4 comments:

  1. Since I have several relatives from Baltimore I changed all their "county" references to "Independent City" as suggested here. Had to resolve the place names for all to "Ignore."

    BUT - Now the Places workspace in FTM 2012 shows "Baltimore, Independent City, Maryland, USA" as a stand alone entry above the various countries. It is not under USA, nor is it in the sub-category "Maryland" under USA.

    So, how do we get Baltimore, Independent City, etc. to show up correctly in the Places workspace tree?

    Richard Belz

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Richard,

      The blob post was not a "how to" on this topic, only an FYI.

      See what happens when you enter, in the Upper Right Corner

      Baltimore, Independent City, Maryland, USA

      That should move it down to

      USA
      Maryland
      Independent City
      Baltimore

      If you want a step-by-step, I can do that.

      There are a couple of other "how to's" on this feature that were posted before this one.

      Hope that helps,

      Russ

      Delete
  2. what if I do not want the new structure of:
    USA
    State
    County
    City

    but prefer the following:

    City, County, State, USA

    Is there a way to go back to the old style?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Roger,

    But the display in the Place field IS City, County, State, USA.

    Russ

    ReplyDelete

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