Wikipedia:Reliability of GNIS data/Cleanup methodology and resources

A general methodology to follow is:

1. Find the state and county histories (#Old state and county histories).

   Sometimes these will already be cited in the county and state articles, although the citations can vary in quality from proper {{cite book}} to vague bare URL hyperlinks to Google Books (which — alas! — does not let all editors in all countries have the same access to books). It is worth checking the HathiTrust and the Internet Archive, as well as a state university's library catalogue, to see whether all of the local histories have been found. Many 19th century histories are available with full text via the Internet Archive and HathiTrust.

   It helps all around, of course, if when you find new county/state histories to add citations for them to the county/state articles. Then the next editor to come along can benefit. It also helps to fix the bare URL hyperlinks. {{Internet Archive}} and {{HathiTrust Catalog}}, as well as the OCLC numbers from the HathiTrust Catalog's find-in-library search, are helpful, too;

2. Check the gazetteers (#gazetteers), Arcadia Publishing books (#Arcadia Publishing), and place name books (#Books of place names).

   These will tell you what the thing truly is, and indicate what and where to look for further information.

3. Search the county histories, and the state histories if appropriate.

   County histories often have breakdowns of early towns, villages, and hamlets in the county and in its various individual townships; sometimes even ones that vanished so early in the history of the United States that a 19th century history records their disappearance, which is quite useful indeed.

4. Check shipping guides and USPS directories.

   These are particularly useful for things that are really post-offices and railroad stops. They will often identify the railway (a possible merger target, as railway articles can have annotated list of stops with as much or even more information than exists in a bad GNIS "unincorporated community" substub).

5. Make at least basic corrections to the article(s).

   The "unincorporated community" cop-out is almost never correct as a category, description in {{Infobox Settlement}}, or place list heading in Township and county articles. Ironically, county histories often have outright lists of towns and villages themselves.

Books to check against

Arcadia Publishing

There are usually Arcadia Publishing books for a particular locality. Arcadia books are not the be-all-and-end-all, but they do point the way and are generally the results of local historians already having done for us the poring over old maps, records, and photographs. Arcadia (and other local history) books helped sort out Robert, California (AfD discussion) and Escalle, Larkspur, California; helped identify what Salminas Resort, California (AfD discussion) actually was; and conversely made the cases stronger against the likes of Ettawa Springs, California (AfD discussion). All of these were two-sentence GNIS-only stubs at the time of deletion nomination, all claiming "unincorporated community".

Gazetteers

Further information: § List of national-scope gazetteers

Gazetteers are useful for telling whether an "unincorporated community" that is just a dot nowadays is a historical post-town/post-village or only a post office; that then might be found in local county/state histories. Take care about dates, of course.

Books of place names

In many states people took it upon themselves to identify the origins of the names of places within the state. These vary in quality but have often helped to clarify matters by giving a more specific characterization of the places in question.

We have found these used as GNIS sources, often quite badly (with, for example, the placename book outright saying that something was just a post-office; but cited in the article in support of some supposed settlement having a post-office).

Henry Gannett's placename books from the early 20th century will turn up, as USGS Bulletin publications and as books in Google Books. Be aware that some of Gannett's errors are the sources of errors in the GNIS in the first place.

In general, always check placename books against a second source. Some of them will helpfully cite their sources, e.g. Federal Writers Project articles from the 1930s, that can then be found and checked.

Old state and county histories

As with the place names books, quality is variable, and those from around 1900 tend to be a bit gushing in their praises of the forefathers and heavy on the anecdotes. That said, their age (typically with a few decades of the foundation of the places, at least outside the east coast) and attention to detail can help resolve matters.

County histories often contain biographies, and sometimes the vanished place named after some erstwhile luminary is discussed more fully in the biography of that luminary.

List of national-scope gazetteers

Lippincott's

Lippincott published gazetteers throughout the 19th century. These are particularly useful for GNIS-derived articles that turn out to be post-offices, railway stations, or old settlements that no longer exist.

Lippincott's has a uniform scheme for identifying what something is, that applies across all states and territories. (The idea that everything is a "city", with various classes and ranks of cities, did not exist in some states until the 20th century.) Something is a hamlet, village, town, township, or city; to which the prefix "post-" is prepended if there is a post-office there as well. Post offices that are just post offices, in a rural area, are simply post-office.

You will see some other gazetteers following the same convention with abbreviations like "p.v.", "p.o.", "p.h.", "twp." and so forth.

• Baldwin, Thomas; Thomas, Joseph (1855). Lippincott's pronouncing gazetteer. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. hdl:loc.gdc/gdclccn.tmp96023479. LCCN tmp96023479.
• Lippincott's gazetteer of the world. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & co. 1880. hdl:loc.gdc/scd0001.00193145826. LCCN 02002832. OL 24447594M. (Lippincott's gazetteer of the world at the Internet Archive)