The Historic Gazetteer

The precise identification of places is essential in genealogy. Unfortunately, too few researchers care in identifying places. The project "GOV" was initiated to help historians and genealogists with the management of place references and to provide high quality data for anyone.

Over time GOV will evolve into a valuable resource for genealogists, historians and sociologists that allows unified access to a variety of location-based data, and in particular to the facts that are relevant to the work of genealogists:

• Geographical location of the place (coordinates or a position on a map)
• Several properties of a place (postal code, town-code, etc.)
• Foreign or former names
• Past affiliation (administrative, law, church, etc.)

GOV contains churches, church districts, places, districts, regions, etc.. Internally, an entry is commonly referred to as "GOV object".

Extent

In GOV approximately one million entries can be found (as of November 2014).