Counties in the colony of New South Wales in 1850 (including the later states of Victoria and Queensland)

This dataset consists of the counties of the British colony of New South Wales (including portions that were later separated as Victoria and Queensland) as at the end of 1850. Counties were administrative regions largely used for purposes of land grants and sales, but also used for some colonial statistics, including five-yearly census returns. Counties could be either formally gazetted or informally defined for administrative purposes. Up to 1826 only seven counties had entered common use, of these only five had been formally gazetted. In 1829 the number of counties was increased to a total of nineteen - the so-called 'limits of location', beyond which land sales were (for a period) restricted. A small number of counties came into official use in the period following while remaining ungazetted. A further 31 counties were gazetted in 1848, while another 32 counties were authorised by the Surveyor General (but not gazetted) in 1850. No further changes to the number of counties were made until 1861.

While counties in New South Wales remain in use, they have fallen out of usage in both Victoria and Queensland. There have also been some changes to boundaries within New South Wales since 1850.

This dataset was created as part of the PhD research project, ‘Settlers and the city: the colonising entanglements of Sydney, its settlers, and their world, 1830-50’, undertaken by Nicholas Pitt and accepted April 2024.

The data was created by combining multiple data sources (historical and contemporary) as described in the methodology. The fields consist of:
Year: Earliest known year of the county name in use
County: County name
DateSource: Source of the earliest known year
BoundarySource: Main source for verifying boundaries - note that multiple sources were used, as described in the methodology.

本数据集涵盖截至1850年末的英属新南威尔士殖民地下辖的所有郡（county），包含后续被划分为维多利亚州与昆士兰州的原辖区部分。郡为当时的行政区划，主要用于土地授予与土地交易，同时也用于部分殖民地统计工作，包括每五年一次的人口普查结果报送。郡的设立既可通过正式宪报公布（gazetted），也可出于行政管理需求进行非正式划定。截至1826年，仅有7个郡得到普遍使用，其中仅5个完成了正式宪报公布。1829年，郡的总数增至19个，即所谓的"定居限制范围"，该范围以外的土地交易曾一度受限。在此之后的一段时期内，又有少量郡投入官方使用，但始终未完成宪报公布。1848年又有31个郡完成宪报公布，1850年另有32个郡经测量总监（Surveyor General）批准设立（但未完成宪报公布）。直至1861年，郡的总数未再发生变动。

尽管新南威尔士州仍在使用郡级行政区划，但维多利亚州与昆士兰州均已不再沿用该建制。自1850年以来，新南威尔士州境内的郡界也历经了若干调整。

本数据集由Nicholas Pitt开展的博士研究项目《定居者与城市：1830-1850年悉尼及其定居者与周遭世界的殖民纠葛》（英文原名：Settlers and the city: the colonising entanglements of Sydney, its settlers, and their world, 1830-50）所创建，该项目于2024年4月通过答辩。

本数据集通过整合多种数据源（历史与当代数据源）构建而成，具体整合方式详见研究方法部分。数据集包含以下字段：
年份（Year）：该郡名称可考的最早使用年份
郡名（County）：行政区划郡的名称
数据来源（DateSource）：该郡名称最早使用年份的溯源依据
边界来源（BoundarySource）：验证该郡界域的主要数据源——注：实际整合过程中使用了多源数据，具体详见研究方法部分。