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Roy Sprunger

American Townships

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Why have American townships been ignored and continue to be ignored, by TMG (at least since version 4), as a viable location when so many sources and repositories have made them important in identifying locations in rural or Early America? What was the rationale? Does anybody know anymore?

 

While the members have often found workarounds to include Townships in their location places, they are just that, workarounds. I am very curious about why they have been ignored for so many years. Storing the information in fields other than where it belongs, between City and County, requires a lot of extra effort in managing the data, unnecessarily, in my opinion, especially when identifying where records are or were kept.

 

 

Roy

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I can't speak for for Wholly Genes, but would offer these comments.

 

First, I've never found townships as repositories of useful records. There are no doubt exceptions, but I'd have to conclude that they are rare.

 

Further, there is nothing remotely uniform about the nature of townships across the states. Many states, most I'd guess, don't even have them. Those that do treat them in a variety of ways. In at least some cases they are municipalities, which means that they are in fact equivalent to towns and cities. In those cases there is no incorporated town or city that shares the same area with a township. However, in many places there can be unincorporated but recognized villages within townships, just as they can exist within incorporated towns and cities.

 

Other states seem to treat townships is different ways, some of which I don't understand. And, of course, the term township is also used in western surveying, which has nothing to do with townships which are governmental units.

 

Given the diversity of meanings to the term township, I don't know how any standard approach to recording them might work. Do you have a suggestion?

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The only way to accomodate everyone's varying place needs is to use a single place field like other programs.

 

I record the township in the city field (following the city if present). That has always worked fine.

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The only way to accommodate everyone's varying place needs is to use a single place field like other programs.

 

I record the township in the city field (following the city if present). That has always worked fine.

Jim,

You have just solved one of my most perplexing problems with locations.

 

Thank you

 

Mike

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I can't speak for for Wholly Genes, but would offer these comments.

 

First, I've never found townships as repositories of useful records. There are no doubt exceptions, but I'd have to conclude that they are rare.

 

Further, there is nothing remotely uniform about the nature of townships across the states. Many states, most I'd guess, don't even have them. Those that do treat them in a variety of ways. In at least some cases they are municipalities, which means that they are in fact equivalent to towns and cities. In those cases there is no incorporated town or city that shares the same area with a township. However, in many places there can be unincorporated but recognized villages within townships, just as they can exist within incorporated towns and cities.

 

Other states seem to treat townships is different ways, some of which I don't understand. And, of course, the term township is also used in western surveying, which has nothing to do with townships which are governmental units.

 

Given the diversity of meanings to the term township, I don't know how any standard approach to recording them might work. Do you have a suggestion?

 

Terry, once again you have given me direction. Thank you.

 

Your reply prompted me to look into just what "townships" are, so I started with Wikipedia. I had no idea there was such disparity. It appears the concept in use in the Great Lakes region of the Midwest is not shared by the rest of the country. While the term is used nationwide, as well as in foreign countries, the meaning and use varies greatly.

 

However, my interest and concern has nothing to do with "repositories of useful records", so much as finding a location where an event happened. When I read a diary, journal or newspaper article that was originally written in say, 1839, and it names a township that no longer exists in the present day, I want to document it as a location. Given what I have learned through my research today, I have to agree with your conclusion. Townships, apparently, are more meaningful to Michiganders than most other citizens.

 

Township <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township>.

While cities, towns, boroughs, or villages are common terms for municipalities; townships, counties, and parishes are sometimes not considered to be municipalities.

 

Civil township <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_township>.

In Michigan, general law townships can incorporate as charter townships, a status intended to protect against annexation from nearby municipalities and which grants the township some home rule powers similar to cities.

 

The majority of family branches I am working on came into Michigan starting with the year it became a state, in 1837. So far, everybody entered or settled through Branch, Hillsdale, Calhoun & Jackson counties. So my focus has been on this area, as well as Northeast Indiana & Northwest Ohio; and will be for some time yet.

 

Consequently, the only suggestion I can offer, is this. Individual users have to determine for themselves the significance of including township designations in recording locations and use the tools that are available, such as using split memos.

 

I have tried to incorporate township names by redesignating the arrangement of place lables, then used them in the City [L3] field, County [L4] field, and more recently, the Temple [L10] field; but have been dissatisfied with the results in every case. Now, I am looking at using split memo citations, at least for Michigan and the surrounding states where the great majority of cemeteries are organized by township; not county and not municipality. But, I then need to keep a master list or guide for what each [M1], [RM2] or [CM5] will be used for; e.g. a schema for each type of memo.

 

The use of townships will be driven by what I need to record and cannot be applied as a universal standard. This methodology will also serve for other non-standard locations although I have taken to using the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) to get LAT/LONG.

 

 

Roy

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Roy; The same goes for here in Wisconsin. Most of my relatives were born on farms. For instance my father was born on a farm and his birth was recorded as "Brooklyn Township" in "Washburn County" so that's how I entered it. That being Brooklyn Township was entered in the city field as "Brooklyn Township". I had been doing it that way since version 04.d.

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You're welcome, Roy.

 

I grew up in California, where the only townships were those created by the Public Land Survey System. Only land surveyors and those preparing deeds had any idea which township they were in.

 

Then I lived in New Jersey. In that state, all the land is in a municipalities. Anywhere that is not part of a city or borough (incorporated small city or town) is in a township. The township provides many of the administrative functions that a city, or sometimes a county, might elsewhere. But some functions, like land registration, is at the county level. To confuse the matter more, the Post Office recognizes many unincorporated villages, so your mailing address may be different than your township - either a nearby borough or a village.

 

Then I moved to North Carolina, where the term township is totally unknown.

 

My research in other places, especially in the central plains states, finds townships named as administrative districts, especially in census records. But it's not clear that all of them were active governmental units - in some cases they seem more like precincts, set up for voting purposes or the like. I'd like to understand them better.

 

For purposes of data entry, I enter townships, in the City field, if I don't find a more concrete place mentioned. But I suspect in some cases, like my New Jersey experience, it would be valid to have both a township and a village name recorded.

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Terry,

 

If I recall, New Jersey has five types of municipal entities and townships are one of the five.

 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_munic...s_in_New_Jersey

"There are five types of municipality in the state—boroughs (250), cities (52), towns (15), townships (246), and villages (3)."

 

Here's a book for you.

"New Jersey's Multiple Municipal Madness"

http://www.amazon.com/New-Jerseys-Multiple...s/dp/0813525667

 

Jim

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If I recall, New Jersey has five types of municipal entities and townships are one of the five.

Jim,

 

Yes. The point is, in that state 1) townships are in fact municipalities, just like cities, boroughs, towns, and villages, and 2) all land areas in the state are in one of those municipalities. That's quite different than the status of townships in some other states.

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Roy, it may simlify things if you think of townships as 'territorial' areas not political or administrative, i.e., cities or counties.

Wiley,

 

That's not necessarily so. In some states, e.g. New Jersey, they are very much political and administrative entities, just like cities and boroughs, with elected officials, a chief executive, legislative and regulatory powers, and provision of municipal services. But in other places they are not.

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Sorry, Terry. Was just trying to help. Won't happen again.

 

John,

 

The help is appreciated. I learned, just as Terry has, that the concept of Township and its importance varies disproportionately across our country. My original position was heavily biased by the area I live in where it is local government.

 

However, because it is lesser or no importance in other states, I have had to rethink its importance to my own data collection and relate it to the specific source information or localized event, I want to capture. Most rural cemeteries in Michigan are organized and managed by the township board of the township they reside in.

 

Never be sorry for trying to help, because you may never know who has been helped. I, for one, appreciate what you wrote as it offers a different perspective, just as Terry did. Since these posts will linger for as long as the forum exists, it may help somebody else years from now.

 

I've been using TMG since 1999 (or earlier, but I can't remember) and joined this forum soon after it came online.

 

Between here and the Rootsweb TMG archives, there is a wealth of information, but it does take some work to ferret it out.

 

 

Roy

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Sorry, Terry. Was just trying to help. Won't happen again.

John,

 

As Roy says, never be sorry for trying to help. In this case, together you and I have demonstrated the point that the term "townships" has vastly different meaning across the country, and probably around the world. The beauty of forums like this is it lets people with different perspectives express what they see and the result is readers learn more than they could from one source alone.

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The fact that there are differences (throughout the world) in the use of the same term reinforces my personal practice to use whatever term and place name is being used in that area at the time of the event as recorded in the contemporary source.

 

I have events in areas when first settled which only had townships that were both 'territorial' areas as well as political or administrative entities. Later, as the area became more settled the 'territorial' names remained in common use but the political or administrative entities became only the county when outside a municipality. When formed these municipalities sometimes took the name of the township, and sometimes not, and sometimes included all of the territory that used to be that township, and sometimes not. And as others have noted, what happened in one area of the country might not happen in another, as sometimes the township remained a separate administrative and political entity.

 

Thus I have multiple TMG Place entries in my Master Place List for the same geographical location. I try to remember to put date ranges on these TMG Place entries and turn on the TMG place's date range warning as a reminder to try to use the correct entry. This has helped me a lot when I get some other person's genealogy data that says John was born in XYZ city on a particular date, but that city had not yet been formed by that date. That area was still only a township. I change it to record that event using the place name in use at the date of that event. Just my recording style.

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Why have American townships been ignored and continue to be ignored, by TMG (at least since version 4), as a viable location when so many sources and repositories have made them important in identifying locations in rural or Early America? What was the rationale? Does anybody know anymore?

 

While the members have often found workarounds to include Townships in their location places, they are just that, workarounds. I am very curious about why they have been ignored for so many years. Storing the information in fields other than where it belongs, between City and County, requires a lot of extra effort in managing the data, unnecessarily, in my opinion, especially when identifying where records are or were kept.

 

 

Roy

 

Most records of a genealogical interest (birth, marriage, death) are collected at a county level, or higher. The records that usually connect to the township are land records, but I think they are also collected and stored by the county. Another unit of interest is a parish, in countries like Ireland or Sweden. The parish is where a lot of birth, marriage, and death records are collected, and they are also noted for census records.

 

Al W.

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I hate to dredge up an old topic, but this has helped me immensely. I have lots of old towns in my Genealogy that no longer exist. Even a few counties. The Geneology softwares I have been testing are hooked into google maps and etc... if the town does not exist it forces you to change it. I often wonder how accurate the info is on Ancestry now because their family tree mangler program forces you to change all your locations around. It's one thing to spell check but another to insist on accurate geo-codes and all.

 

TMG does a beautiful job at breaking down the locations.

 

As for a town in a city... we have many in Louisville now as big city Louisville has eaten up all the small towns. I list them as Valley Station, Louisville in the city tab... and it all works out now.

 

Thanks for the great product

 

Allen

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Then I moved to North Carolina, where the term township is totally unknown.

 

Terry

 

This is not accurate -- the term Township has been used in North Carolina.

 

The term District, as part of a county, was used in these North Carolina census records: 1790, 1830, 1840, 1850 and 1860.

 

In 1868 Townships were established to replace Districts in North Carolina.

 

The term Township, as part of a county, was used in these NC census records:

1870, 1880, 1900, 1910 and 1920.

 

The term Precinct was also used in conjunction with Township, in these NC census years:

1900, 1910 and 1920.

 

Place fields:

Detail -- [Division or Precinct] Idalia Precinct

City -- [District or Township] Richland Township

County -- Beaufort County

State -- North Carolina

 

Rae Jean, descended from a very long line of North Carolina ancestors.

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Rae Jean,

 

Did these districts/townships have administrative functions? Or were they just voting districts like congressional districts? Or something else?

 

Do they still exist? I've never heard of them in the 10+ years I've lived here, but I've never done any ancestor/historical research in NC.

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