Tag Archives: sourcing

Sourcing Is An Art: Using Location For Organization

We all know that sourcing is an art, not a science, right?  And there is no one way to write a source. Lots of wrong ways, but also correct variations that allow you to find your source and the information it contains again. Also you allow others to assess where the evidence came from and how credible it might be.  Or might not be.

But I also use my sources as an organizational tool.  I’ll bet that you use Find A Grave in your normal genealogy routine.  When I write my sources, I start with the name of the cemetery:

Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery, Lexington, Rockbridge, Virginia,  James C Donald (1836 – 1899), Find A Grave (http://findagrave.com : accessed 16 Mar 2015), Find A Grave Memorial no. 34,346,979. Memorial by Thomas Daniels, photo by anne mitchell; photo and maker legible.

Now when I look at a listing of all of my Find A Grave entries, I can easily scan the list and see everyone in my tree who is buried in the same cemetery:

find-a-grave-sources

I also do the same thing for census records. It allows me to look within a county and district and see more or less who seemed to live near each other.  If I were going to publish a census citation, I would make it follow the Evidence Explained format, but for examining data to show people in relation to each other, this suits my needs.  And I can find what I need to write the full citation as needed, when needed.

census-sources

Usually you find people living near each other as expected, but sometimes you find people who surprise you.

Ready Cash and William Wallace appear on separate, consecutive pages in the 1840 census, but in a source listing, the “nearness” pops right out.  Charlton Wallace was very likely living in the household of William.  Martha Jane Cash was very likely living with her father Ready.  In 1842, Charlton married Martha Jane.  Wonder how they might have met!? 🙂

1840-source

Finding new ways to organize your data and use what you have, usually brings new insights.  And this one, is pretty easy to implement.

My Top Ten Blog Posts for 2012 on Finding Forgotten Stories

My most visited page on the blog is my How To Videos page where I post links and slides from my presentations that I do for Ancestry.com. Also the page Blogs You Should Read is highly viewed. (Maybe I should update that!)

But here, in order are my most read posts for the year:

  1.  Treasure Chest Thursday — Sourcing Presentations
  2. Sorting Saturday — Making Sense out of the Mess or Sources Matter
  3. Sorting Saturday — Good Source, Bad Source, Exhaustive Search
  4. Sorting Saturday — The Legend of Middle Names
  5. Tuesday’s Tip — Ask Ancestry Anne’s Top 20 Search Tips
  6. Treasure Chest Thursday — The Gillespie Family Bible Page from the Gillespie Family BiblePage from the Gillespie Family Bible
  7. Gilbert McClung Gillespie
  8. Tuesday’s Tip — Ancestry Magazine on Google Books
  9. Wisdom Wednesday: It is what it is, it aint what it aint
  10. Sympathy  Saturday– Miss You Dad

    Gilbert McClung Gillespie's (1940-2012) grave site at Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery, Lexington, Virginia

    Gilbert McClung Gillespie’s (1940-2012) grave site at Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery, Lexington, Virginia

That’s a pretty wide variety!

To everyone who has followed me this year, thank you.  I learn so much by writing this blog and I’m glad you are sharing the journey with me. 🙂

Tuesday’s Tip — Stop Searching, Start Analyzing

I’ve been on Vacation, a girl’s weekend in New Orleans.  So I’ve been away from my blog.  Good weekend!  New Orleans is an amazing town.

So I’ve been working on my Sources.  I really thought this was going to be tiresome, but it’s not.  I’m actually slowing down and looking at the images.  And rethinking about people that I haven’t thought about in awhile.

Mary Elizabeth Gillespie is my great great grandmother.  Here is where she fits in my grandfather’s tree:

And I came to the conclusion quite some time ago that Mary’s parents were Willis Gillespie and Harriet Smith.  But you know what, I have nothing to prove that.  Nothing.

Here is what I know:

  • On Wyatt  Gillespie’s marriage certificate, his parents are listed as Jere and Mary Gillespie. 1
  • Jeremiah Gillespie and Mary Gillespie were married in 1842. Talton Gillespie is listed as Jeremiah’s father, Mary’s parents are not in the index. I suspect it is because Jeremiah was not 21 when they were married. Do I have the original or have I seen it?  I have not. 2
  • My Great Aunt Eva told my father that Jeremiah and Mary were first cousins.3

I choose Willis and Harriet because they seemed to be the most likely candidates. And they may be correct, BUT that is not proof. And now it really vexes me. What if I am wrong? The earlier you find “the truth” in your genealogy career, I suspect the more likely it is that the Genealogical Proof Standards are not being met.

Parents of Mary Elizabeth Gillespie? Back on the list of what I need to prove.

Footnotes

1. Virginia, Virginia Department of Health, Certification of Vital Records, Marriage Certificate, Wyatt Paul Gillespie, Laura Cecil Donald, 24 Jan 1894, Rockbridge, Virginia
2. “Virginia, Marriages, 1785-1940,” index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XRDN-B9Q : accessed 14 Aug 2012), Jeremiah Gillaspie and Mary E. Gillaspie, 21 Nov 1848; citing reference p 408, FHL microfilm 30273.

Tuesday’s Tip — New Job, Punctuation and New Perspective

After 4 years at Ancestry.com I’m working at a different job and therefor not paying as much attention to my blogging the last few days.  I’m now the product manager for Institutional and Library version of our product working with Kim Harrison.  I’m super excited about learning how we can best serve libraries and other organizations who use our products to assist their patrons with genealogy research.  It’s a different way to look at Ancestry.com and it has given me a new perspective on what we do.

When I haven’t been doing that, I’ve been working on cleaning up my sources.  Well, I’ve also been watching the Olympics and cleaning up my sources. I really thought that this was going to be tedious, but not so.  I’ve been working on them by source, and I’ve been noticing something when I’m done with a group, for instance 1840:

You can quickly tell who lived close and who did not, assuming of course that the records aren’t in semi alphabetical order, which should be in the source as well.

And by the time I get to 1850, I see families and their proximity to one another:

You just don’t see that in a family tree.  You see who your ancestors are, but you don’t see them in proximity.  This combined with Thomas MacEntee’s article: uencounter.me – A Way To Plot Cluster Genealogy Research makes me think what if I did genealogy for a week, and didn’t use a family tree.  What might I learn?

But first I have to finish my sources. I am on a mission. 🙂

Oh, and punctuation.  I know where the colon goes in the piece of documentation that is: (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 4 Aug 2012), but I’ve been writing it as (http://www.ancestry.com accessed : 4 Aug 2012).  And I taught it in my livestream class that way.  No one is perfect, I suppose.

This weeks theme will be sourcing.  And I’m discovering the more I do it, the more I like it.  Who knew?

Treasure Chest Thursday — Sourcing Presentations

I don’t know if these are treasures, but these are the PDF’s of the sourcing presentations I’ve done for Ancestry.com

From Citing Sources Part 2

Happy Sourcing!

Citing Your Sources Can Be Fun!

OK, I don’t know if I made it seem fun, but hopefully I did explain it enough to motivate people to try!
The presentation is at: Citing Your Sources Can Be Fun on livestream.