Jurisdictions and Civil Divisions

[History_Hunter]

Can anyone help me "decode" the the 1901 British Census jurisdictions and civil divisions on the 1901 Census?
I'm using RootsMagic 7 and the template for the 1901 Census is asking for these two items.

They give "Monmouthshire, Wales" as an example of the "Jurisdiction".
They give "Bedwelty, Glammorgan Ash" as an example of the "Civil Division.

I know little to nothing of the structure of the census divisions.
I have a 1901 Census from the village of Paddock Wood, Kent in the rural district of Tonbridge.
On a typical 1901 Census sheet, what fields would be equivalent to the Jurisdictions and Civil Division, based on the examples given?

Sorry for what may appear to be a silly question, but I don't have a clue about how England is divided for census purposes.

[Pam Downes]

Methinks RootsMagic doesn't know its top from its bottom. (If it's got any connection to Ancestry, that could explain it because Ancestry are useless at British geography.)

I would assume that Jurisdiction is the same as 'county' because Monmouthshire is a county in the country of Wales.

Have you spelt Bedwelty and Glammorgan Ash correctly, or have you made a couple of typos? Just asking before I blast RootsMagic for quoting places that don't exist.
Bedwellty (double L) is a town in Monmouthshire.
I can't find a place called Glammorgan Ash, but Glamorgan (one M) is both a town and a county in Wales. Mountain Ash is a town in the county of Glamorgan. Or rather, was. In 1974 county boundaries got moved around, new districts were created with new names, and in some areas resentment with all the fiddling still exists.

What other boxes are listed with regard to the census details. Obviously you've got names and age. Does it say road, town, county?

It took me ages to understand the various 'divisions'. Town, county, parish, I was OK with, and I soon managed registration district and deanery, but others such as the ones listed in the first sentence of the description for Sea Palling had me reaching for the headache pills!
https://www.origins.org.uk/genuki/NFK...hite1883.shtml

It's easier to tell you about some of them when we know exactly what boxes you have to complete.

Pam

[christanel]

I have Rootsmagic 4 and jurisdiction is the county as you say Pam.
I don't fill in any source info I don't understand so civil division is not one I use nor do I fill in the Owner/Creator of the images section.

My version has boxes for Census ID, Jurisdiction, Civil Division, Item type, Owner/Creator, Website and separately the URL

Also under Source Details
Access type, Access date, Page ID, Person of Interest and Credit line (repositary and film details)

Do I use them all? NO. When in doubt I use the Notes section for each event for each individual.

Actually I am quite lazy about it all and the two of you put me to shame.
Christina

[History_Hunter]

Pam and Christina,

I really appreciate you both replying so quickly. I too have issues with the way RootsMagic organizes things. It’s clearly tailored for American genealogy. If it’s any consolation, Pam, it is bad for Canadian genealogy too. I used to use The Master Genealogist (UK version) and loved it! Unfortunately; it went under. RM7 is quite poor for census entries, but I’m trying to deal with the issues, as it’s likely the best of what I can get.

As noted, I also think that jurisdiction is the county. And, yes, their spelling is atrocious. Why, in any sane world, would they use a Welsh example? Pick something easier to spell.

The civil division, I think, is supposed to be something like “Tunbridge, Brenchley, Paddock Wood”. It makes some sense that one would drill down from the county level. Does this seem to be a reasonable assumption? When one looks at how RM7 generates the citations, this would make it document the census location from the county level down to the village. Then I just add the Info for the specific page and I’m done.

Christina; did you have to tailor the census template “Master Citation” to make it more generic? RM4+ uses the same templates. The Master portion is supposed to be reusable, but using the civil division seems to make it way too specific to be used for more than a single record. e.g. for a town. I’m going to move the civil division field to the the record-specific portion of the citation. That.way I have one citation template for all of Kent. I could even go further and move jurisdiction too.

[Pam Downes]

Pam and Christina,

I really appreciate you both replying so quickly. I too have issues with the way RootsMagic organizes things. It’s clearly tailored for American genealogy. If it’s any consolation, Pam, it is bad for Canadian genealogy too. I used to use The Master Genealogist (UK version) and loved it! Unfortunately; it went under. RM7 is quite poor for census entries, but I’m trying to deal with the issues, as it’s likely the best of what I can get.

As noted, I also think that jurisdiction is the county. And, yes, their spelling is atrocious. Why, in any sane world, would they use a Welsh example? Pick something easier to spell.

And why quote something which, on the face of it, appears to be wrong anyway? Though hopefully a couple of our 'Welsh wizards' might be able to clarify that.

The civil division, I think, is supposed to be something like “Tunbridge, Brenchley, Paddock Wood”. It makes some sense that one would drill down from the county level. Does this seem to be a reasonable assumption? When one looks at how RM7 generates the citations, this would make it document the census location from the county level down to the village. Then I just add the Info for the specific page and I’m done.

But when you write an address on an envelope you start with the smallest place, and end with the largest. You don't write Canada, Nova Scotia, Halifax.

Re your example from Kent, your assumption would appear to be correct.
https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/KEN/Brenchley
Tunbridge being the registration district, Brenchley the main town, and Paddock Wood being part of the town. Use a search engine for a description of a chapelry.

Even better, scroll a little further down that page and there's a link to something I was trying to find except that I'd forgotren my password to FamilySearch.
Under 'maps', click on the 'English jurisdictions in 1851'.
Enter Brenchley, click on the parish name with the balloon beside it, and you get three tabs, the middle one of which is Jurisdictions. You can scroll down, and you can click on the various links for further details.
You might already know this but Tunbridge and Tonbridge are two different places/areas, not just one place misspelt. They are both adjacent towns and civil registration districts, with Tunbridge as a town being Tunbridge Wells.

What I really like about that LDS maps site is that you can see all the adjacent parishes so if you can't find a baptism etc in one parish you can quickly see which other PRs to search.

Christina; did you have to tailor the census template “Master Citation” to make it more generic? RM4+ uses the same templates. The Master portion is supposed to be reusable, but using the civil division seems to make it way too specific to be used for more than a single record. e.g. for a town. I’m going to move the civil division field to the the record-specific portion of the citation. That.way I have one citation template for all of Kent. I could even go further and move jurisdiction too.

From googling, it would appear that there is specific RootsMagic UK version, though presumably you might have problems entering Canadian addresses into it. There is a demo you can download.

Pam

[Megan Roberts]

I won't try to translate Rootsmagic's approach to British addresses, let alone their Welsh ones, but I have the same problem with Family Tree Maker, and as my tree has branches in a number of countries I know that the normal way for each country to present addresses varies greatly. So I approach the FTM software on the basis of making it fit each countries needs.

I then use a mapping tool to work out village, town, county, state etc. That could be something like the gazeteer that GENUKI have, or Google maps.

The complication comes with boundary changes, authority mergers, name changes etc., and common parlance. For instance "Salop" is the county of Shropshire" and "Glamorgan" is the county of Glamorganshire and there is no town in Wales called Glamorgan.

Another complication comes from bad transcriptions which catch out those who could not possibly know different. Ancestry have a 1981 birth registration from the district of Newport, which according to them is in the inferred county of Shropshire. Nonsense! Newport is in the county of Monmouthshire in the country of Wales whilst Shropshire is a county in the country of England. Of course it is possible that in 1981 Monmouthshire might have been part of the reorganised county of Gwent!

[helachau]

I notice the General Register Office (GRO) populates "Districtof Birth/Death" with "Bedwelty" (1 x "l") when you begin to key "Bedwellty" into that field. "Bedwellty" (2 x "l") is not recognised.

[History_Hunter]

Thanks for the info about the maps. FamilySearch has so much on the site and some of it very hard to find.

And why quote something which, on the face of it, appears to be wrong anyway? Though hopefully a couple of our 'Welsh wizards' might be able to clarify that.

Pam; I am not an expert in Welsh locations. I can only quote what they displayed. How could I know the correct spelling? I tried google and wasn’t able to make much sense of the names either.

The name ordering issue is one that many style guides address as a personal preference. The largest to smallest type of ordering is the one the template appeared to have adopted for the overall citation. At this point, I am still trying to see if I can use their templates. I may need to make my own set of British templates.

[History_Hunter]

Megan;
You can imagine how overwhelmed I feel. I just think RootsMagic could have chosen a better example to illustrate what information should go in a field.

[History_Hunter]

I notice the General Register Office (GRO) populates "Districtof Birth/Death" with "Bedwelty" (1 x "l") when you begin to key "Bedwellty" into that field. "Bedwellty" (2 x "l") is not recognised.

Thank you for the correct spelling. I just wish that the example RM7 chose had been easier to relate to other cases. The actual issued I had was trying to understand what blanks from the census to put in the noted fields.