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October 14, 2007

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Miriam Robbins Midkiff

This site is also a lot of fun to play with, using one's unusual family surnames. For instance, when I plug in my husband's surname, Midkiff, I get two small communities by that name: one in Upton Co., Texas, and the other in Lincoln Co., West Virginia. I know from doing family research that relatives of my husband's ancestors founded these communities.

By the way, the direct link to the search page for domestic (U.S.) locations (which can be a little difficult to navigate from the GNIS home page) is: http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/

W. David Samuelsen

You wrote:
"The GNIS serves two purposes for genealogists. First, it gives precise locations of every village, mountain, river, airport, bay, beach, bridge, etc. in the United States. The information includes the exact latitude and longitude of each named feature. Second, it can help find locations mentioned in old documents."

A big chuck there. GNIS had been known to make mistakes. I pointed out several locations not in right place. Like Utah Veteran Memorial Cemetery in wrong county.

Also you wrote:
"For instance, the small cemetery where my immediate family along with many of my aunts, uncles and cousins are interred and where I plan to spend eternity isn't listed in the GNIS database."

Did you try to inform the GNIS manager of the location of this cemetery?
GNIS-Manager
I report every location of cemetery I come across along with the name of it, even giving them old and current names of cemeteries all the time. They do not have every resource book avail to them so the managers depend on you and me to notify them of every cemetery, every lonely burial, etc. Now of all states, Utah and Oregon are considered the most complete when it come to the cemetery listings. New York has a long way to go to attach names to marked cemeteries.

Trish Lewis

Now, if there was only something like this for Ireland! I have a transcription of an interview of my great grandfather who was from County Mayo in Ireland that claims he's from a place called "Ampworth". No one in Mayo history/genealogical centers or on email lists has heard of a place called that or anything like that...*sigh*

Jack MacKeen

The FAQ at the site "http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/" notes that each logon is automatically assigned a session ID number. If you bookmark it without removing the session ID number, the link will not work in the future.

Happy Dae

Should we ignore it because GNIS has errors? Would that attitude apply to the Federal and State Censuses? Knowing that some death certificates have errors, should we then avoid these, too? Humans err. We as family historians err, too.

If "the proof of the pudding is in the eating," I suggest we sample this resource, verify it with other sources, and record our findings accordingly. Does this make any sense to anyone else?

Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com/ssg1.htm

Edith Sherwood

To Trish Lewis: About finding the name of a small place in Ireland, here is a suggestion. See if your local LDS Family History Center still has the old microfiche version of the IGI (International Genealogical Index). At the very beginnning of the microfiche cards there used to be a list of all the places and it told how they are listed in the IGI. Many of the newer librarians don't know about it, because most people use the Family Search Internet version now. Of courses, your place may still not be listed, but it's worth a try.

Eric Bragg

I have used GNIS for many years and find it a valuable resource for locating named places. One can also search for feature type, such as cemetery, to list all cemeteries in, say, a county. So if you're not sure of the spelling of a place name this sometimes helps. There are occasional errors in the data, but these are usually minor and can be worked around. There are a number of locations listed for which the geographic location is not known (latitude, longitude). It would be useful if private sources could provide information regarding the location of such places so that updates to the GNIS could reflect this missing information. Regarding locations of foreign places, there are a number of sites that may prove useful. These include Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/tgn/index.html), NGA GEOnet Names Server (http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/index.html), and Google Earth (a downl;oadable application), all of which I highly recommend.

S L Stoeckle

Here's another way to use GNIS. If you don't know the name of a county, type in the name of the town or city (and select the state). Thid is handy if you don't have a copy of the Handy book...well, handy.

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