Church, Wetzel, West Virginia -- another location bestowed by a software error

Question

Move over "Y, Somme, Picardie, France,"  "Holland, Reusel, Reusel-de Mierden, Noord-Brabant. Netherlands," "U, Cocle, Panama," "Young, Texas, United States",  "Age, Cuanza Sul, Angola," "Colony, Laurel, Kentucky," and "Sea, Manado, Sulawesi Utara, Indonesia"! Meet "Church, Wetzel, West Virginia," a  newly found member of the club of places that have been erroneously added to people's biographies by an over-eager auto-completion protocol in an old genealogy software package.

"Church District" apparently is a former place in Wetzel County, West Virginia, according to http://www.wvculture.org/history/communities/districtplacenames.html , and it appears as a place name on some 19th century census records. However, some of the roughly 70 WikiTree profiles where Google finds the string "Church, Wetzel, West Virginia" appear to be for people who lived and died long before 1846, when Wetzel County was established, and/or had all of their other life events somewhere far away from West Virginia.

So if you run across "Church, Wetzel" in an ancestor's biography or profile, consider the possibility that it's an error.

Comments

Very funny! And super helpful. I was just mystified by Church, Wetzel, WV and sure enough, G2G had an answer. Thank you!

Answer 1

West Virginia counties are divided into districts and in Wetzel County one of them is the Church District.  These district names are currently used.  It's possible that in an unincorporated area the district name only was used as a place name

Answer 2

In England, Church is the name of a village near Accrington, Lancashire, and has been a cause of confusion.

In the Church especially, it was so confusing to have a chapelry called Church that they called it Churchkirk.

There was a marriage license for "Church church" that managed to flummox a good genealogist.