How to handle change of County Boundaries when recording Locations?

[trystan]

Funnily enough, the same issue crops up in my own industry of the chemical industry (I kid you not) on how to label pipelines, when they cross multiple areas of a plant (because, like 'counties' they also have different 'area numbers'). The general rule is that they are labelled as to where they originate from (where they start), it make the whole job a lot easier especially as things get moved around (like areas of a county changing). 

So as others have suggested, if the relative was in Derbyshire based on their town at that time of that record, then they are best recorded as being in Derbyshire even if the boundaries change which puts them into Leicestershire later on.

We had a bit of a similar dilemma of how to name the counties on RootsChat when Sarah and I set it up, and that's why  we stuck to the county names as of 1851-1901, as that encompassed almost all the census dates that we available almost ten years ago when we set up the site.

Trystan
RootsChat Caretaker

[stanmapstone]

And the Association of British Counties refuses to accept that Bristol was City & County for over 600 years!

Many years ago Bristol Record Office sent this reply to someone about Bristol Records;

"Bristol became a county by Charter of Edward III on 8 August 1373 and remained so until 1 April 1974. The records of Bristol are kept here at Bristol Record Office. Over the years there were various city boundary extensions; for example Bedminster which originally lay in Somerset came to be included within Bristol in 1835 and a similar extension took in Knowle and Totterdown in 1897.
Therefore if you wanted, for example, a Register of Electors for Knowle for 1880 it would be at Somerset but for 1920 it would be at Bristol. There is a similar situation on the Gloucestershire side of the city: Westbury-on-Trym, for example, was included in Bristol by a boundary extension of 1904 so once again a Register of Electors for, say, 1900, would be at Gloucester Record Office, Whereas a one for 1930 would be here at Bristol Record Office. Although this is all quite logical, I do understand how confusing it can seem to be when you are new to Family History! To determine which repository you need it is important to state the *type* of record, *date* and *place* that you want when you pose your question otherwise there is a chance of misunderstandings.
For family history often church records need to be used; the churches had their own boundaries, Circuits for the Methodist church, Dioceses and Deaneries for the Church of England. The various Circuit records deposited here in Bristol Record Office include those for places in Somerset such as Cheddar or Weston-super-Mare. The Church of England boundaries are different and mean that
we hold parish registers for churches both in Bristol itself and for an area to the north and east roughly bounded by Marshfield, Yate and Littleton on Severn.
When indexers compile indexes of records for the benefit of other family historians it is entirely up to them how they arrange them. Bristol and Avon Family History Society divided its "1754-1837 Marriage Index" into two sections: North Somerset is one, Bristol and South Gloucestershire the other. The LDS church includes Bristol for convenience under Gloucestershire in the IGI.
I hope this has done something to explain the difficulties you have been experiencing. As your research progresses I am sure you find that some of the problems resolve themselves but I have to add that after very many years of professional work in this field I still need to check up factual points of date and place regarding records on virtually a daily basis. It really is not a subject on which there can ever be a simple answer because of the way that local administrative and religious history has evolved over the years."

Stan

[KGarrad]

The question arises because my sport uses ABC to define eligibility for the County teams!

I come from North Somerset; Portishead is my home town.
BUT, being a twin, and premature, my mother had to go into hospital. Southmead Hospital was the one that covered North Somerset, and (according to ABC) lies in Gloucestershire!

I am therefore eligible to play for Gloucestershire, but not for Somerset!

[Pejic]

I always record the information as found, but add (in brackets) the current information.  The reason is that the original information is important for matching with other data, but the current information is handy for judging how proximat places are to each other, also it is a lottery as to how transcribers / submitters have dealt with it, so you have alternate search criteria.  Also having been doing this since before the last 2 boundary changes I have concluded that when recording "current" information it is a good idea to note the "current" date.

[Tikva]

Thank you to everyone who replied!  My instincts were telling me to just go with the County as it was at the time of the recorded event, so going by the replies here, they were right.   

[brianofcava]

I think that the name of the location as it was at the time of the event being recorded is the safest - it is the only reference that is static, as today's name for that location might change tomorrow. (Ref: Rutland became part of Leics, then back to Rutland again.) Widening the scope to countries, I was a bit concerned to find that my 10g-grandfather, Corneille Sedt, is mentioned somewhere as having been born in Belgium in 1560. Belgium? 1560?

[pinefamily]

Probably an Ancestry tree, lol.