Counties/Cities

[Alexander Bisset]

In order to try to identify cities and which county they are in so that auto searching will work, I've added a list of the cities of the UK. However I'm not confident that I've allocated every city to the appropriate county. Can users cast their eye over the list and advise please. I'm very confident about the Scottish cities so they aren't listed.

NB. this is the HISTORIC county the city is in and NOT the modern equivalent. ie: which county would you mainly search for records in.

<!-- Welsh Cities -->
<RegionToParish parish="Bangor" region="Caernarvon" />
<RegionToParish parish="Cardiff" region="Glamorgan" />
<RegionToParish parish="Newport" region="Monmouth" />
<RegionToParish parish="St Asaph" region="Denbigh" />
<RegionToParish parish="St David's" region="Pembroke" />
<RegionToParish parish="Swansea" region="Glamorgan" />

<!-- Northern Ireland Cities -->
<RegionToParish parish="Armagh" region="Armagh" />
<RegionToParish parish="Belfast" region="Antrim" />
<RegionToParish parish="Derry" region="Derry" />
<RegionToParish parish="Lisburn" region="Antrim" />
<RegionToParish parish="Newry" region="Newry" />

<!-- English Cities/Places -->
<RegionToParish parish="Isle of Wight" region="Hampshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Bath" region="Somerset" />
<RegionToParish parish="Birmingham" region="Warwickshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Bradford" region="Yorkshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Brighton" region="Sussex" />
<RegionToParish parish="Bristol" region="Gloucestershire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Cambridge" region="Cambridgeshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Canterbury" region="Kent" />
<RegionToParish parish="Carlisle" region="Cumberland" />
<RegionToParish parish="Chelmsford" region="Essex" />
<RegionToParish parish="Chester" region="Cheshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Chichester" region="Sussex" />
<RegionToParish parish="London" region="Middlesex" />
<RegionToParish parish="Coventry" region="Warwickshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Derby" region="Derbyshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Durham" region="Durham" />
<RegionToParish parish="Ely" region="Cambridgeshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Exeter" region="Devon" />
<RegionToParish parish="Gloucester" region="Gloucestershire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Hereford" region="Herefordshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Kingston" region="Surrey" />
<RegionToParish parish="Lancaster" region="Lancashire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Leeds" region="Yorkshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Leicester" region="Leicestershire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Lichfield" region="Staffordshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Lincoln" region="Lincolnshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Manchester" region="Lancashire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Liverpool" region="Lancashire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Newcastle" region="Northumberland" />
<RegionToParish parish="Norwich" region="Norfolk" />
<RegionToParish parish="Nottingham" region="Nottinghamshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Oxford" region="Oxfordshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Peterborough" region="Northamptonshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Plymouth" region="Devon" />
<RegionToParish parish="Portsmouth" region="Hampshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Preston" region="Lancashire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Ripon" region="Yorkshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Salford" region="Lacashire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Salisbury" region="Wiltshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Sheffield" region="Yorkshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Southhampton" region="Hampshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="St Albans" region="Hertfordshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Stoke" region="Staffordshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Sunderland" region="Durham" />
<RegionToParish parish="Truro" region="Cornwall" />
<RegionToParish parish="Wakefield" region="Yorkshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Wells" region="Somerset" />
<RegionToParish parish="Winchester" region="Hampshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Wolverhampton" region="Staffordshire" />
<RegionToParish parish="Worcester" region="Worcestershire" />
<RegionToParish parish="York" region="Yorkshire" />

Ignore the word Parish/Region above basically the first is the name of the city and the second is my guestimate for the county are there any errors? Or oddballs to be aware of?

 

[Liberty]

Alexander
Good job!
A couple of typos - you have LACAshire in one place, and there is only one 'H' in Southampton, but I am sure that would be sorted out anyway. As far as I can judge they all look fine, although I think some of what is (now) considered London was not confined to Middlesex. But if Ihad to allocate London to a single county, I would certainly go for Middlesex as you have.
(How did you generate the list of cities, by the way?)

 

[AdrienneQ]

Should Ipswich Suffolk be on the list

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Alexander
Good job!
A couple of typos - you have LACAshire in one place, and there is only one 'H' in Southampton, but I am sure that would be sorted out anyway. As far as I can judge they all look fine, although I think some of what is (now) considered London was not confined to Middlesex. But if Ihad to allocate London to a single county, I would certainly go for Middlesex as you have.
(How did you generate the list of cities, by the way?)

Thanks for picking up the typos I've fixed that. I got the list of cities from Wikipedia as the list of official cities in UK. Some of the more odd little places that are actually historic cities, therefore appear on the list this is due to the fact that historically there was the guff about Cathedrals being part of the definition of a city!!

Should Ipswich Suffolk be on the list

It isn't one of the 51 official cities apparently. I can add it. The difference in adding places is that if someone has entered eg: "53 some street, Ipswich". At present it will get picked up as an unknown country. If I enter it into the list then "53 some street, Ipswich" would get transformed to "53 some street, Ipswich, Suffolk, England". ie: a fully qualified location which means it would be properly searchable using the automated search.

 

[Norman]

Most of my ancestry seems to be from North London/Essex and they usually show as Middlesex, which of course no longer exists. My South London ancestry often show as Surrey.

 

[Tim]

Alexander, do you need a list of all the Parishes of a county?

 

[Alexander Bisset]

London is a pain. For most things Middlesex works but as you know that's not infallible. Its the pain of trying to get a degree of uniformity for searching and accepting that it simply isn't possible in all cases. So the best you can do is to go with what works for most cases accept that for some cases manual searching is still required.

Parish lists at this stage is probably overkill as many people still have just a street name as the location and are missing parish, county and country. Not looking at anyone in particular Tim . (whistles nonchalently)

In due course recognising parish names is a good idea although its a mammoth task getting them all typed up in a suitable format.

 

[Tim]

Parish lists at this stage is probably overkill as many people still have just a street name as the location and are missing parish, county and country. Not looking at anyone in particular Tim . (whistles nonchalently)

In due course recognising parish names is a good idea although its a mammoth task getting them all typed up in a suitable format.

I only have them in for testing purposes! Honest

Does this format work?

Accrington [St James], Lancashire
Adlington, Lancashire
Admarsh, Lancashire
Aigburth, Lancashire
Ainsworth, Lancashire
Aldingham, Lancashire
Altcar, Lancashire
Altham, Lancashire
Ancoats St Andrew, Lancashire
Angerton, Lancashire
Ardwick [St Thomas], Lancashire

 

[Liberty]

Just to complicate life for you - or maybe not.
I've not gone down the FTA route as yet,though I am VERY impressed at all that's going on
My tree, being esentially for my own consumption, often doesn't have counties because they seem unnecessary. E.g. why would I bother to add 'Norfolk' to all the place references that say 'Sheringham '? I KNOW where Sheringham is, and it saves me an awful lot of key strokes not to enter the county.
Even worse, I quite often contract place names further. The next settlement is/was Beeston Regis, which I frequently abbreviate to BR. Another section of my family were christened /married / buried in St John Lee, Northumberland, which frequently gets put down as SJL. I suspect that Alexander's program would be liable to get very upset but I am perfectly happy with this, becasue I know exactly what it means.
Would in be in deep disgrace if I tried marrying my tree to the FTA?

 

[Tim]

Hi Liberty,

In a few cases, I also don't have county or region or parish, as the only info supplied was the address such as 39 Turpin Green Lane. Now I could assume that I know the rest of the address or should I leave it as what was recorded? This does mildly amuse some people who shall remain nameless but they do write an exceedingly good FTA program.

But, a lot of Family Tree software auto-fills the location as you start to type or offer a way of mass updating. I understand the reason for shorthand but it doesn't work if you want to use a tool like FTA or if you ever want to share your work, they just won't understand it, or worse come up with a different meaning to the one you intended.

However, FTA will still work for you and you should get some good results, it'll be the Location data reports that may not display that well.

So I'd say try FTA with your data as it is, see how it work, what reports it gives you, and if you decide to mass change the addresses at a later date, then FTA will have even more to offer you.

 

[Norman]

You could open up the gedcom file in a good ASCII text editor and do a global find and replace to change your abbreviations to their proper name before opening in FTA.