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Archiver > NYSUFFOL > 2002-03 > 1016465632


From: "Edward Smith" <>
Subject: [NYSUFFOL] Re: [li-rooters] Newtown, NY, Suffolk County
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 11:04:30 -0500


-----Original Message-----
From: David Roberts <>
....

>
>Sounds like the source of this misinformation was the LDS Church.
>The LDS files the old Town of Newtown under Suffolk County, even though it
>never was in Suffolk & is the Queens County Town the most distant from the
>Suffolk County line.
>I brought this up to the reference desk at Salt Lake Family History Library
>in 1995 & was told, rather rudely, that Newtown was in Suffolk County.
>That's one of the very few times I was not politely treated by the folks
out
>there.
>After I started working [97-98] at the local LDS FHC, my "supervisor" sent
a
>number of messages to Salt Lake about this, but the last I looked Newtown
is
>still in Suffolk County according to the LDS, where it never has been.
>Because of this mis-filing, Newtown events on Ancestral File tend to show
up
>in Suffolk County.
>Somehow this correction is not making its way thru' proper channels in Salt
>Lake & people looking for events in Newtown are off into a different
county.


David et al,

Although it is indeed frustrating that the FHL will not correct this error,
there are other independant reasons why non-local researchers may be mislead
too. The USGS search engine, MapQuest, YahooMaps and other geographic
databases which use only current names and not historical names will show
Newtown NY in Suffolk County and not in Queens. That is because there is a
neighborhood called Newtown in the Hampton Bays area of the Town of
Southampton. (Of course, to reiterate one of the points you made, David,
that area was never an official governmental jurisdiction or postal
address).

So I think we would still be dealing with this confusion, even if the FHL
had never made the mistake. In fact, perhaps an overreliance on such sources
may be why the FHL refuses to correct their mistake.

Ned

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