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Grimesgang

Handling "Township" or other Place Info from Census

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There is no place in the US Standard Place Name layout for township, or any other political subdivision, that is used in the US Census. How do people handle this? Obviously, I'm new to TMG. I used Family Matters (MS Access-based) before, and lots of things that were easy then seem to be harder now. Trying to get over the learning curve is daunting. :blink:

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I put the township in the "city" field unless there is an actual town also listed - which I find is most often not the case.

 

I put the township, district, ward, or whatever there may be in the citation, but omit it from the place fields in the tag if there is a more definitive place name (like town) listed.

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It can be tricky, because some places actually have "Township" as part of their official name, while many census records with "Township" noted after the place name are just identifying a rural location according to the way the location is designated by size and/or incorporation and how it was set out for organizing the census. You will see "City" used in the same dual manner in different census records.

 

Like Terry, if I am familiar with the locality and know it is a stand-alone placename, I put the town name in the "City" slot on the place entry; but if I see from the headings on the census that this is a local part of a larger placename, I put the township info in the "Detail" slot and the larger place in the "City" slot. Most of the time, though, for locations put into the "City" slot, I omit the term "Township" unless it is part of the formal name of the location.

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I always enter ' "name" Township' in the City for Census records. I consider Town differently as in municipal size (City-Town-Village). A Township is generally a rural area. I may have a city or town as Jefferson in Jefferson township, therefore I make that distinction. I enter the ED and SD and building locale in the notes for the citation.

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I always enter ' "name" Township' in the City for Census records.  I consider Town differently as in municipal size (City-Town-Village).  A Township is generally a rural area.  I may have a city or town as Jefferson in Jefferson township, therefore I make that distinction.  I enter the ED and SD and building locale in the notes for the citation.

 

Like quite a few others, I put the township in the city field. If there is also a town, I put both there. Sometimes the town with the same name as a township may grow so that it is located in more than one township. (Generally, I don't include the township information unless I am using a source that specifies it.)

 

This is a bit messy in terms of searching, I suppose, but I generally search using "contains" so that I get whatever has my desired piece of info.

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I have a custom place style I use for census and I put the township or Civil District in the Detail field.

 

I wondered about the custom Place styles, but since it seems like the only place they change the field is in the tag where you're filling it out, I'm not sure I see the use for the alternate styles yet. As you said, you use the "Detail" field. Well, Township is a detail, isn't it? I thought the description for alternate styles said that it didn't change things in reports. I would think that is exactly where the alternate style concept would be most important.

 

For the moment I've even experimented with putting the township in the postal code field and the page number in the phone field. However, I may be OK with a memo for at least some of that. Pre-TMG, I was used to having all my information on one page (the family group sheet), including citations and details. TMG splits this info up into lots of separate places. Since at least five of my families are from the same rural county in Ohio from 1830 well into the 1900s, I was always able to see family movement and connections very easily because the township and page was on the census tag in the main family group sheet. TMG seems to hide some of those details, unless I'm not doing it right yet.

 

However, every day I learn more about this rascal. I can't even imagine trying to create the code for this program; the flexibility is mind-boggling.

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In the UK is slightly different but same principle applies. I've edited one of the tags to be REG DISTRICT instead of the one that you are meant to use as TEMPLE, as in the UK we will never use that one.

Shaun

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I wondered about the custom Place styles, but since it seems like the only place they change the field is in the tag where you're filling it out, I'm not sure I see the use for the alternate styles yet. As you said, you use the "Detail" field. Well, Township is a detail, isn't it? I thought the description for alternate styles said that it didn't change things in reports. I would think that is exactly where the alternate style concept would be most important.

 

For the moment I've even experimented with putting the township in the postal code field and the page number in the phone field. However, I may be OK with a memo for at least some of that. Pre-TMG, I was used to having all my information on one page (the family group sheet), including citations and details. TMG splits this info up into lots of separate places. Since at least five of my families are from the same rural county in Ohio from 1830 well into the 1900s, I was always able to see family movement and connections very easily because the township and page was on the census tag in the main family group sheet. TMG seems to hide some of those details, unless I'm not doing it right yet.

 

However, every day I learn more about this rascal. I can't even imagine trying to create the code for this program; the flexibility is mind-boggling.

 

Actually that is where you use custom styles. YOu can use the OUTPUT templates to tell your reports what elements to use and in what order. You can even add text like "in the" or "from the" between elements. These don't work on repositories, but they do work on other places.

 

So for my custom District's style, I have:

<in the [District]>< of [County], ><[state], ><[Country], ><[Postal], ><[Phone], ><[Directions]>

 

 

L2 is labled District

L4 is County

L5 is State

L6 is Country

L9 is Directions

L10 is Place Style but I don't have it print.

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