Research Notes

As we conduct our research, we are regularly making new discoveries about the places of LDS history. We are publishing our major findings through traditional outlets, but for many of our more specific discoveries, we want to document the reasoning behind the data you see in MormonPlaces. Many of these are draft papers about working theories, not polished results; feedback and corrections are more than welcome.

• 2022-02: made a significant breakthrough on my research on the early (pre-1877) evolution of local administration. Trying to figure out why they would often refer to something as a "stake" and a "branch" in the same sentence. Were they confused? I now believe that at least until the late 1850s, the term branch was generic, not specific. It was used to mean any church unit (think of the tree metaphor), whether a ward, stake, mission, or ... branch. The latter, specific meaning of branch as a small congregation, which was standardized in 1877, simply meant that no other specific term applied. Why does everything I do keep returning to cognition, linguistics, and ontology?
• 2021-12: Mapping regions with partially defined boundaries, Transactions in GIS, DOI:10.1111/tgis.12884. Discusses the algorithm used in MormonPlaces to estimate the jurisdiction of wards and branches (the blue blobs), even when the boundaries are not completely defined.
• 2019-01: A Qualified Assertion Database for the History of Places, International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, 13 (1):95-115, DOI: 10.3366/ijhac.2019.0233. Discusses the historial GIS data model for MormonPlaces
• 2018-02: Macedonia was not Macedonia. For decades, we have assumed that the town of Macedonia in Pottawattamie County, Iowa was the location of the Macedonia LDS branch (1847-1852), despite its contradictions with local histories. They're right and we're wrong. Probably.
• 2018-01: Locating the Winter Quarters Wards. Most maps of the layout of the 22 wards in Winter Quarters are probably incorrect. Here's why, and some possible improvements, including the short-lived 13 wards .