How can I submit corrections for geographical errors?

I also don't understand when you say: "All six New England states - plus New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania - have every square inch incorporated as a city, town, Reservation, or miscellaneous subdivision [buels, gores, etc], so none of these states should have any district indexed as unincorporated county."  Tell me why ED 60-28 in New York State (randomly chosen) has "unincorporated" in its original ED filmed definition.  It's in Westchester County.  To check that....go to the 1950 Archives census page.  Choose New York, and then put in 60-28 for the Enumeration District (ED) number as your only search terms.  The Archives transcribed definition shows the area is unincorporated within the county of Westchester.  If you click on the "(View Original ED Description)" link on the page you will see the census bureau's original filmed description of the ED that the Archives transcribed.  Note that 60-28, and below it on the filmed page 60-29 are "unincorporated" areas.

Hi, Joel -

Thanks for your response!  I see what you mean - on this site, the larger cities are given their own headings, separate from the counties they're in.  This does become a problem searching on Ancestry.com, which I understand you have no control over - part of what I'm trying to figure out is where the disconnect is; I assume they received the data from the National Archives?  The way this site is set up, the New Britain/New Haven error won't throw researchers off course, whereas on Ancestry, if you did a search for, say, everyone with the last name Kowalski in Hartford county, then no residents of New Britain will be included in the search results.  I get that they're a private company and you guys are a government agency, so their issues are not under your purview; I'm just trying to figure out where the glitch happened in the data feed.

As for the Westchester county situation you mentioned: Herein lies the madness of New York's geographical heirarchy!   In NY state, everything is part of a city, town, or reservation, but then they have an additional level of incorporated villages.  If a place is incorporated as a village, it is a subset of the town from a census perspective, but an entirely separate location from a vital records perspective.  (The village gets its own Hall of Records for births, marriages, and deaths.)  So New York folks will call an area "unincorporated" if it is not part of a village, but that area is still part of an incorporated town.  See the second page of ED 60-28: It says Westchester county, and then Courtlandt town underneath.  Courtlandt has two incorporated villages - Croton-on-Hudson and Buchanan - as well as areas that are not part of a village.  So a New Yorker will call this area unincorporated, meaning it is not contained within a village, but that area still belongs to a town.  So it was an error of omission for the census-taker to leave the "incorporated place" field blank on the cover page.  "Unincorporated" means something very different in the 9 northeastern-most states, than it does in the whole rest of the country, which have areas that truly belong to nothing below a county level.

BTW, this whole "village" system in NY drives me nuts, it's so needlessly complicated!  And Westchester is the worst county for this; the Ryes and the Mamaronecks and overlaps and discontinuous areas are a *huge* pain in the ...

Thanks for your attention on this!  Take care,

-Julie

Hi Julie,

I disagree with your interpretation and your generalizations.  You indicate "So New York folks will call an area "unincorporated" if it is not part of a village, but that area is still part of an incorporated town.  See the second page of ED 60-28: It says Westchester county, and then Courtlandt town underneath".  Show me that Cortlandt Town (note spelling) is "incorporated".  I see at https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/incorporated-area  that an incorporated area "means the area that was within the corporate limits of St. Croix Falls, Osceola, North Hudson,.... or Prescott".  I treat northeastern state's "towns" not as population centers with corporate limits but more like other state's townships which are geopolitical divisions.  I see at https://www.townofcortlandt.com/  that "The Town of Cortlandt, New York is located in the northwestern corner of Westchester County. With a population of almost 43,000 citizens, Cortlandt includes two incorporated villages, Buchanan and Croton-on-Hudson, and several hamlets including Montrose, Crugers and Verplanck".  With your view we would have have an incorporated area (Buchanan) within an "incorporated" town of Cortland.   The Census Bureau 1950 enumeration district definition of ED 60-28 of an unincorporated area within the town of Cortlandt within the county of Westchester, NY appears to me to accurately describe geographically the area in question.

Hi Joel,

As I mentioned to Claire, I would not make the case for removing or redefining any descriptions from the original records; I can't speak to why the Census Bureau classifies locations one way or another for the purpose of population study.  I just mean that as far as organizing the documents on a website for public research, it is misleading to put ED 60-28 (for example) under the heading of "other places" rather than Cortlandt town.

Let's say that someone was looking for the record of someone who lived on Crompord Road in 1950.  (That's my best guess for the street name on the first page of 60-28.)  They would search by drilling down from NY state, to Westchester county, to Cortlandt town, and then find that none of the ED's identified as Cortlandt included Crompord Road.  So they would think this area was not enumerated at all.  To use another Westchester example, ED 60-292 is also categorized as an "other place."  It is located within the town of Pelham, which is in the opposite corner of the county, over 30 miles away.  The other "other places" are in Eastchester, Greenburgh, and Ossining, all spread across the height of the county.

By all means, present the scanned images exactly as they are, and the Census Bureau can consider Crompord Road to be miscellaneous Westchester county for whatever reason they want, but from a user standpoint, it is more specific and accurate to categorize an ED [of any stripe] as a sub-set of one town [if it is indeed within one], rather than as a spot that could be anywhere in any part of the county.

Again, I present all of this respectfully. I'm sure all pockets of this country have different geographical quirks that can clash with the uniform metrics needed for a national census.  I have been doing research in and about the NYC metro area for 20+ years, and I've gotten to know its hierarchy (however maddening) really well; I wouldn't attest to any other region.  Like, Virginia has a Richmond county that is nowhere near the independent city of Richmond, and the city's districts got lumped into the county's, but I couldn't *begin* to unravel that knot!

Thank you for the links, and for taking the time to read all this.

Best wishes,

Julie

Hi Joel,

As I mentioned to Claire, I would not make the case for removing or redefining any descriptions from the original records; I can't speak to why the Census Bureau classifies locations one way or another for the purpose of population study.  I just mean that as far as organizing the documents on a website for public research, it is misleading to put ED 60-28 (for example) under the heading of "other places" rather than Cortlandt town.

Let's say that someone was looking for the record of someone who lived on Crompord Road in 1950.  (That's my best guess for the street name on the first page of 60-28.)  They would search by drilling down from NY state, to Westchester county, to Cortlandt town, and then find that none of the ED's identified as Cortlandt included Crompord Road.  So they would think this area was not enumerated at all.  To use another Westchester example, ED 60-292 is also categorized as an "other place."  It is located within the town of Pelham, which is in the opposite corner of the county, over 30 miles away.  The other "other places" are in Eastchester, Greenburgh, and Ossining, all spread across the height of the county.

By all means, present the scanned images exactly as they are, and the Census Bureau can consider Crompord Road to be miscellaneous Westchester county for whatever reason they want, but from a user standpoint, it is more specific and accurate to categorize an ED [of any stripe] as a sub-set of one town [if it is indeed within one], rather than as a spot that could be anywhere in any part of the county.

Again, I present all of this respectfully. I'm sure all pockets of this country have different geographical quirks that can clash with the uniform metrics needed for a national census.  I have been doing research in and about the NYC metro area for 20+ years, and I've gotten to know its hierarchy (however maddening) really well; I wouldn't attest to any other region.  Like, Virginia has a Richmond county that is nowhere near the independent city of Richmond, and the city's districts got lumped into the county's, but I couldn't *begin* to unravel that knot!

Thank you for the links, and for taking the time to read all this.

Best wishes,

Julie