It seems to me like to a great extent this is a clear case of "gagging at gnats;" I prefer to just make a "judgement call" where a city crosses county lines; for example I usually use Suffolk Co for Boston, MA because the greater portion of the urban area and it's port are there. In the first place most of the time we don't have an exact location for where the birth, marriage or death took place. Eg Hatchville, I use Dunn county because that is where GNIS says it is, ironically according to Google earth the lat and long that GNIS gives is about ten feet west of the Dunn CO line and thirty feet into St. Croix county which is where my father placed some of my family events and perhaps he relied on a plat map we have somewhere in the family that located some of the family properties late in the 19th Century.
My point is if you are concerned about filling in the County blank use a judgement call and if that bothers your sense of propriety make a note to that effect in the relevant part of the family page. I have an incredible number of "probably born in such and such a place based on this or that census in my family page notes, and almost as many place of death assumed from place of burial etc notes. If I spend three days trying to hunt down a death location for someone that I have the date from a death index that only tells me what county they died in and can't get any hard evidence to prove it, but that person has been in the same city from birth to a year before death I am tempted to but don't list it as place of death,but do put it in a note.
I was a little mystified by the Township and Range discussion; these are not "Historic names" they are simple geographic grid locations. In a lot of the midwest it seems fairly common to identify locations that way, especially in the census. Perhaps it was realized that places like Hatchville would be ephemeral and it would be better to use an ID that would last. Granted there have been minor changes in a few section lines over time, but most of the places that were located by Township and Range in 1850 or so are still in exactly the same place today. I am sometimes amazed when I find a county in the Midwest that isn't much bigger than the six mile square of a single township and yes, while the idea of township on a flat map is exactly six miles by six miles, owing to the imposition of that idea on a sphere and surveying limitations/irregularities you will never find one of that dimension.
Some of this discussion escapes me entirely, not knowing the reference to PNA and I am a little bemused by KJ's suggestion of imposing a polygon from Google earth, it seems to me like given the Nation, State/province, County/whatever populated place hierarchy we have complicated the process enough. If I have the church or house a wedding has been performed in, or the hospital someone has died in I might add that, though I might put that information in a note instead also. But to add a, as I understand it, arbitrary "polygon" for location purposes seem to me like a bad idea. I do on occasion note locations that will be pretty much meaningless to anyone not steeped in family arcana (which spell check tells me is not a word) such as Two Bit Ranch, but those sort of locations only appear in notes, usually about events not in the birth, marriage and death profile.
If anyone running across this note is having troubles with the township concept versus the township and range grid system feel free to contact me and I can explain it to them.
My point is if you are concerned about filling in the County blank use a judgement call and if that bothers your sense of propriety make a note to that effect in the relevant part of the family page. I have an incredible number of "probably born in such and such a place based on this or that census in my family page notes, and almost as many place of death assumed from place of burial etc notes. If I spend three days trying to hunt down a death location for someone that I have the date from a death index that only tells me what county they died in and can't get any hard evidence to prove it, but that person has been in the same city from birth to a year before death I am tempted to but don't list it as place of death,but do put it in a note.
I was a little mystified by the Township and Range discussion; these are not "Historic names" they are simple geographic grid locations. In a lot of the midwest it seems fairly common to identify locations that way, especially in the census. Perhaps it was realized that places like Hatchville would be ephemeral and it would be better to use an ID that would last. Granted there have been minor changes in a few section lines over time, but most of the places that were located by Township and Range in 1850 or so are still in exactly the same place today. I am sometimes amazed when I find a county in the Midwest that isn't much bigger than the six mile square of a single township and yes, while the idea of township on a flat map is exactly six miles by six miles, owing to the imposition of that idea on a sphere and surveying limitations/irregularities you will never find one of that dimension.
Some of this discussion escapes me entirely, not knowing the reference to PNA and I am a little bemused by KJ's suggestion of imposing a polygon from Google earth, it seems to me like given the Nation, State/province, County/whatever populated place hierarchy we have complicated the process enough. If I have the church or house a wedding has been performed in, or the hospital someone has died in I might add that, though I might put that information in a note instead also. But to add a, as I understand it, arbitrary "polygon" for location purposes seem to me like a bad idea. I do on occasion note locations that will be pretty much meaningless to anyone not steeped in family arcana (which spell check tells me is not a word) such as Two Bit Ranch, but those sort of locations only appear in notes, usually about events not in the birth, marriage and death profile.
If anyone running across this note is having troubles with the township concept versus the township and range grid system feel free to contact me and I can explain it to them.