Can I use MyHeritage URLs as source?

Question

I've plugged my family tree also into MyHeritage, and they added some sibling info to some ancestors (7-8 generations back). I've now taken that info and added it to my WikiTree genealogy. For example [[Stegen-28|Stegen, Catharina Dorothea]] which needed a source when I created a new profile for her. Is it permissible to use MyHeritage's URL of this person as a source in WikiTree?

Answer 1

It is OK to use as a secondary or tertiary source, as it has the potential to point to something that points to something useful. But as a primary source, it's unfortunately not very good. I tend to use things like My Heritage, Geni, Ancestry Trees, and Rootsweb as clues to help me point to the actual information that proves or disproves the facts on the profile. I wouldn't leave it off the profile if you think it helps prove your facts, but I wouldn't rely on it as a primary or sole method of doing so.

Comments

Oh, and on a side note, I dated a Krug in High School, so it's fascinating to me to see that name being researched. I might poke over to take a look to see if any of them tie back to Indiana out of sheer curiosity.

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Thanks, Scott, for your encouragement. So far, all the Krugs I discovered are in Germany (or rather Danzig which is Gdansk in Poland now but was German in the 1700s and 1800s). One of my ancestors' sister from Lüneburg (which is where I hail from) married into the Krug family. Some information popped up at a Canadian site, so there may be a connection to the New World. I'll keep you posted :)

Answer 2

If I follow the link , I see her family tree with dates and places but nothing to tell me where these came from. To me this is not a valid source.
How do you know her dates of birth and death and her parentage? Where did the tree that my heritage filled in come from. Do they provide records to support it?
Look for confirmation using information from  birth registrations , death certificates, baptism or burial records, censuses, wills or other records or combination of records. These are the types of sources that I feel are valid.

Comments

Thanks - I concede your point. Alas!, I'm hitting a paywall on MyHeritage. I guess I'll have to visit the actual archives in Lüneburg or Hannover to access the documents (no online digital copies available yet).

Answer 3

A link to a tree is not usually adequate as a source. You should be looking for the underlying records that support the facts in the tree. You can search record collections on MyHeritage too.  Underneath each of the records you find on there you will see an option to «Cite this record». If you click on that it will give you a source citation that you can copy over to the profile you are working on.

Comments

Thanks - I concede your point. Alas!, I'm hitting a paywall on MyHeritage. I guess I'll have to visit the actual archives in Lüneburg or Hannover to access the documents (no online digital copies available yet).

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Have you looked to see if there are indexes or transcriptions or even a browsable image file on familysearch.org?

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Thanks for the hint. I just registered on familysearch.org and looked for the Krug branch of my family tree. No hits :(

For now, I'll focus on those that I have registry entry scans for, like https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Graul-182 (hopefully, my source comments are complete enough for WikiTree's standards)

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Might also be worth looking at the catalogue on familysearch to see if they have any browsable image sets for the area you are interested in. Some of their material is not indexed so it would not come up in a name search.