Did you create two completely separate place hierarchies, or did you nest the PLSS information within an existing hierarchy? If you used a nested approach, did it make more sense to do that at the state level or under the county?
I am still early enough in setting this up that I would rather learn from other people’s experiences before I get too far down a path that becomes difficult to maintain or undo. I am especially interested in what has worked well in practice when you are dealing with places that may have both a modern jurisdiction and a historical land description, or areas that have changed civil jurisdictions.
Had to look up what a PLSS plat is. So, the answer is no.
I suppose many of the places and locations I have added to my place database started out as a plat, but at the time I have added an event occurring there the location was known by an identifiable name. And if not by a location name, not enough information exists beyond the event occurred in a particular county or state/territory.
But I do not see why these plats, when they can be identified, cannot exist within the place hierarchy. After all, a relative could have bought a plat and started farming it and naming it after himself (or his wife). The challenge is to find out about that information.
As far as I know, the PLSS townships never cross state boundaries. But I wouldn’t put them under counties, because those boundaries have changed over time.
I also create a KML file with the outline of the property (this is now easier to do in Gramps Connect).
That’s my layperson understating of it as well: that when the grid hits a state line or something like a lake that becomes a fractional township. Because of that, I’m debating on whether to list Townships under the state that they are in, or under their prime meridian. Leaning towards state, just for ease-of-use.
I suppose I could enclose the specific aliquot with both the PLSS township and the civil township that it is in.
That’s what started me down this! I’ve been plotting land in QGIS and when the Gramps Connect conversations started, I got excited! I had no idea you could do that! (cough we need to talk about the wiki cough) I’m really looking forward to getting it in there and seeing it animated across time.
You may be also interested in these (if you weren’t already aware):
The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries has a download page for KMZ files: Download the AHCB data
The BLM has a REST API that can give you KML for a given PLSS quarter-section of land. Currently when I draw farms, I eyeball the USGS National Map (with the BLM PLSS layer added) and see what present-day roads or other landmarks the property lines up with. See Layer: PLSS Intersected (ID: 3)
Oh, I am SO interested! GIS is not my forte, so I am learning as I go, and was honestly about to convert the AHCB pdf download into a svg to try and get boundaries (which, let’s be honest, would have been mediocre at best).
I had no idea that an intersected PLSS layer was out there. I’ve been using gis midpoint splits plus lining up landmarks to get it. Which… is actually kind of amazing. There are still tree lines and stacked rock walls along fields that match land boundaries my ancestors had in the 1840s!
I also tried using Gemini to create a KML for me. It was able to read the handwritten land patent just fine but couldn’t get the coordinates right, even when I gave it a specific coordinate pair to use as the centroid of the section for purposes of its calculations.
No matter how many times I build a specific one with instructions like “Your single most important rule: Aliquot descriptions routinely repeat the same cardinal direction, and that repetition is CORRECT. “The Northeast Quarter of the Northeast Quarter” (NE¼ NE¼) is a valid, common parcel. Never change a repeated direction.”
