Recently a question was raised as to what county should be used to identify where events happened. For example, a man could be born in a house, married in the same house, and die also in the same house. Suppose when the birth occurred that the house was in Orange County, when the marriage occurred the house was in Culpeper County, and when he died the house was in Madison County.
Is it better to say his birth place, marriage site, and the location of death were
1. All in Madison County, or
2. The birth was in Orange Co., the marriage in Culpeper Co., and the death in Madison Co.?
In spite of the great temptation to say Madison Co. for all three, genealogists prefer to say what the county was when the event occurred. Vital statistics were skimpy in Orange Co., but if you were looking for those that might pertain to birth, you surely do not want to be looking in Madison Co. The logic, of course, is with the second alternative above and behooves the researcher to realize when the boundaries of counties change and how they changed. So if I have a death in Madison Co. in 1795, I will not look for a birth record of an elderly woman in Madison Co.
Let me give another example which I think is comparable, but many of you might not agree. The earliest written appearance of the name Hebron for the Lutheran Church in Madison County was in 1850. So if I am talking about this church when Rev. Franck came in 1775, should I call it " Hebron "? At that time, the name was something else, probably something like " German Lutheran Church ". A little later it became the " Lutheran Church ", and still later it became " Madison Lutheran Church ", before it was recognized as " Hebron Church " about 1850.
If I do a book on baptisms in this church in the period from 1750 to 1813, and I call the church " Hebron ", then I am creating a falsehood. There was no church by that name in that period. The dilemma is that no one would recognize the book if I called it the German Lutheran Baptisms . Here is a case where it seems the modern or current name must be used to describe the church throughout its history.
Comments?
(03 Dec 03)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.