This is a follow up to the article on July 25. I am grateful to the people in the FH Dept in SLC who helped me find information on this question.
Let me express my appreciation and admiration for those working on the list of standardized place names. What a monumental project – and remember this is also a global project. Place names change over time. I think all of us as genealogist realize the importance of using the correct place name for the time of the event we are documenting.
The Division numbers that were appearing in Prairie place names in nFS were census division numbers. After the census created and used them, other administrative functions found them useful for voting and tax purposes. This is helpful information, and if we were citing information from the census it would be very important to know the census division number.
For examples of the census division number do a search in Wikipedia for say Calgary and in the information box on the right you will see the census division number.
Is a census division number part of a place name? I don’t know anyone who includes a census division number as part of a place name. I have been told that they will be removed from place names in nFS in the next update to the standardized names list.
I was assured that “Standards maintained by the Church follow the philosophy of representing what the world regards as proper for modern and historical context; following geographic, governmental, religious, cartographical norms, not just genealogical usage norms.”
The census division information may be used in the update to Record Search and in other FamilySearch products.
It is important that we help the good people working on these projects. Their work is important and they deserve our help, so please send in Feedback any time you see something that needs to be changed or if you have a suggestion for an improvement.
Division numbers in standardized Prairie place names in nFS
August 15, 2010 by Peter
