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Villages/Cities/Islands that change countries?

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Posted Monday, September 3, 2007 - Post #19097
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For places, I am using the hierarchy built into Genopro i.e., Country -> State/Province -> County -> City/Town/Village

The problem I have is that I don't know how to handle cities that changed countries?

For example, up until 1912, the island of Chios was part of the Ottoman Empire. After 1912, Chios was part of Greece.

So my grandfather was born in the Ottoman Empire, but got married, lived, and died in Greece, all in the same village.


How do you recommend I handle this?

Also, how do you handle it when a village changes names? Another village was known as "Ano Moussonitso" but was renamed to "Athanasios Diakos". What's the best way to handle that? (It was a village in Greece before and after).
Posted Monday, September 3, 2007 - Post #19100
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As my family originates from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, I have a similar problem.  Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory after WW1 so a lot of my ancestors were born in cities/towns which are no longer in present day Hungary.

What I decided to do is to refer to the name of the city/town as it was known when my ancestor lived there.  For example, my grandfather was born in Nagyszeben in what was then Hungary, which today is the city of Sibiu in Romania.  It didn't seem appropriate to refer to it by its Romanian name as this would have implied that he was of Romanian descent (he certainly would not have called it by its Romanian name!).

The name of the country each place was located in was also a problem.  Once again, it would have been historically inaccurate to record one of my ancestors as having been born in Slovakia when that country didn't even exist at the time.  I ended up setting up a separate entity which I called "Greater Hungary" to cater for these situations but also record their present names in the comments.    

I concede that this is not a solution for everyone and would also like to know how others deal with this problem.

Posted Monday, September 3, 2007 - Post #19103
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Nick K (9/4/2007)
For places, I am using the hierarchy built into Genopro i.e., Country -> State/Province -> County -> City/Town/Village
The problem I have is that I don't know how to handle cities that changed countries?
How do you recommend I handle this?
Also, how do you handle it when a village changes names? Another village was known as "Ano Moussonitso" but was renamed to "Athanasios Diakos". What's the best way to handle that? (It was a village in Greece before and after).

Since I was born in a place which no longer belongs to Germany, but then it did, I record the way it was then.
A change of name gives a new place. Reasons for this change can be explained under comments or under sources. This source then can be used for both places. Others may have other ideas.
Posted Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - Post #19118
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Thank you the replies and suggestions.

The thing I like about the "Places" feature, is that I can click on the location and see all the activities that happened there. If I start splitting it up by who owned the island/village, that continuity will end, and I will end up with multiples entries for that one village (ie Byzantine Empire, Genoa, Ottoman Empire, Greece .. depending how far back I can find records).

It would be nice if a timeline feature can be added for Places to record things like
-changes in occupying power
-earthquakes
-volcanic eruptions
-massacres
-fires
-famines
-wars, battles
etc.

It would be nice if those "Place timelines" can be overlayed on an Individual's timeline to see how old they were when something happened.


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