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Master Style List for U. K.

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I have been using TMG - USA for many years. Recently I have started researching my wife's family and found ancestors and cousins in England and Ireland. Therefor I want to set up a UK Style on the Master List and rename some (or all) of the 10 name labels. However, I am not familiar with the place names and have come across references to Borough, District, City, County, Civil Parish, Ecclesiastical Parish, Registration District, and others. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I hope someone can tell me what place name labels are used by TMG-UK users.

Thanks. Tom

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First, a warning... The list reports in TMG use the US default style labels for the place levels.

The UK default style labels can be on a different style level for a comparable place entity.

This means that list reports will be broken when using the US and UK styles in the same data set. For example, the list reports use the city entity on level 3. The UK style uses the city entity on level 4. So searching for a city, you won't get the city for any place using a UK style.

The levels for the default UK style are: Addressee, Detail, Village/Area, Town/City, County/Region, Country, Postal, Phone, Coordinates, Temple.

Bottom line... If most of the places in your data set use the US place style, it's best to adopt a consistent scheme to use the UK place entities with the US place style. You could make a new style for UK places to have appropriate level labels while keeping the place entities at the same levels as the US place style. This means having two UK entities at the same level separated by a comma. Example level 3 would be "Village/Area, Town/City". There is a limit for how long a place level label can be and display properly in the label field on a tag entry screen.

  

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Thanks Jim - will follow your advice about using City in level 3.
I'm trying to understand UK references to what "appear" to be places so would appreciate more assistance.

I have seen numerous references to Boroughs. Does/how does one record a Borough?
Here is another reference to place in an 1871 census - residence: Civil Parish "St George the Martyr Southwark, London, England." In the same census - Registration district "St Saviour Southwark." Does any of this get recorded in a place name field, comment section, etc.?
Thanks again, Tom

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Tom Malek asked:

>  I'm trying to understand UK references to what "appear" to be places so would appreciate more assistance.

I don't use the UK version, but many of my ancestors come from Britain so have experience with UK place names.  There are many reference sources which can help with this.  I have several old books and also check genealogy society web sites for references for UK place names, but usually start with a search in Wikipedia.  However, your question is most reasonable since UK place names can be very confusing as you will see below.

> I have seen numerous references to Boroughs.

It is my understanding that Boroughs are a subdivision of a city or town.  I think of them as named neighborhoods.  As a similar example, in some of the larger US cities they would probably be numbered Wards of the city which are often referenced in census enumerations.

> ... residence: Civil Parish "St George the Martyr Southwark, London, England." In the same census - Registration district "St Saviour Southwark."

As mentioned above Southwark is a Borough of the city of London.  As further subdivisions Boroughs can have Districts. (To make things really complicated there is a District named Southwark of the Borough of Southwark of the City of London, so would be "Southwark, Southwark, London, England"!!!)  Now to complicate things further, there also are areas known as a Parish.  Originally they were the area which was the jurisdiction of a given church.  Now, however, a civil parish is a country subdivision forming the lowest unit of local government in England.  And to make matters worse, like Registration districts the boundaries of a civil parish can in some cases straddle the boundaries of more than one District or Borough, or even straddle the boundaries of more than one City or County.  Think of US Congressional districts whose boundaries often have no relationship to any other governmental entity.  As for "St George the Martyr, Southwark, London, England" see the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwark_St_George_the_Martyr which shows it as a Civil Parish wholly within the boundaries of the Borough of Southwark in the City of London.

As for Registration districts, quoting from the Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration_district :

Quote

Registration districts in England and Wales were created with the introduction of civil registration on 1 July 1837 and were originally co-terminous with poor law unions. Their existence as autonomous entities came to an end in 1930, when the relevant administrative county or county borough was made responsible. A subsequent series of reforms of local government has resulted in the responsibility today being held by the relevant county council, unitary authority, metropolitan district, or London borough.

Each district is divided into sub-districts, each of which has a registrar responsible for the registration of births, marriages, civil partnerships, and deaths in his or her area. Overall responsibility for a district is held by a superintendent registrar.

Registration districts are not always co-terminous with county boundaries, and so in the past were grouped into "registration counties" for statistical purposes. They remained in use for the census from 1851 to 1911.

So for St Saviour Registration District in London, see: https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/st saviour southwark.html which shows this Registration District was created in 1837 and abolished in 1901, and contained four Civil Parishes over time.

Confusing, Huh?!!

> Does any of this get recorded in a place name field, comment section, etc.?

Well that is a matter of personal choice in how you want to use TMG Place records and fields.  The real issue is to ensure that the Source Citations when output include all the information available, and the Narration of the event lists all that is known about the location of an event.  For citations I usually enter details below Level 3 in the CD, and for events I enter such details in a split memo part which is referenced in the sentence template to output just before the Place.  But that is just my style.

In general I choose to only use the Level 3 field and higher in Place records, but that is simply my preference to minimize the number of unique entries in the Master Place List.  Further, I reserve the Level 1 field for a sort code to make it easier to find and use existing Place records by using the F2 key in the Level 1 field.  I have recorded considerable detail about how I enter Places in my on-line book.  See the Section concerning entering Places in the Data Entry chapter here:

https://www.mjh-nm.net/DATENTRY.HTML#Places

Scroll down to "2) My Non-U.S. locations:" to see some examples of how I choose to handle UK Places.

Hope this begins to help explain confusing UK place names and gives you some ideas,

Michael

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Thanks Michael. After carefully reading all of the comments, I think the best thing is to use the U. S. Standard Style. I think that will make my life easier.

Tom

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