Can I get feedback on the bio and sources?

Question

I'm going back and improving the bio and sources for the people I recently entered. DeWitt-3213 is the first one I think I've "finished" and I'd like to get some feedback if I did this "right"...

Did I miss anything that should be included?

Did I mess up the sources?

Should I remove the "family records" now that I have census stuff listed?

How exactly should I be linking the sources to the bio? (I think it's obvious which goes where... but fresh eyes...)

Is there a better way to format the census part of the bio?

And anything else that looks like it could be better.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The overall profile format looks good. Here are a few comments:

• It is mostly a chronological narrative (which is how I like to lay out profiles). But there are a couple of exceptions:
  1. "He married Eleanor in 1795." comes before the 1773 paragraph.
  2. "He applied for a pension on October 18, 1838" comes after the 1840 census.
• Inline citations are slightly preferred over putting all the sources at the end
• There are no links in the sources. When citing Ancestry for example it is much easier for readers to check facts if you provide a link. You can use the WikiTree Sourcer extension to automatically create citations with links.
• There is a typo in the FindAGrave source which makes it show up as [1]: "[https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/225531927/martin-dewitt] Find-a-Grave" should be "[https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/225531927/martin-dewitt Find-a-Grave] ". Better yet, use the template: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:FindAGrave

Answer 2

1. Did I miss anything that should be included? There's always more to add, but the questions I have are "what did he do for a living?", "Who were the 3 females under 10 in the 1800 census if he didn't have daughters at that point in time?" and "Do we know anything about how he met Eleanor? Was she a neighbor, families intermarried so they knew each other, etc."
2. Did I mess up the sources? No, they look good. It would be great if you could find them on familysearch to add a "free to view" link, but you could use the Ancestry Citer app to help you do that too. Check that out under Find--> Apps
3. Should I remove the "family records" now that I have census stuff listed? Up to you, I would probably leave them, or move them to a "See Also" section after the other Sources using three = signs in the header
4. How exactly should I be linking the sources to the bio?  If you want to use the inline sourcing, you can add <ref> and </ref> tags around each source, right after the point you want to list it in the bio. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Sources#Embed_them_as_references_.28footnotes.29 for more info
5. Is there a better way to format the census part of the bio? Everyone has their own preferences. If you use the WikiTree BEE app to create automatic bios, it says things like "In 1860 Martin was living in South Carolina", etc. You could leave it the way you have it, or try to make it more narrative doing something like "In 1870 there were three additional people, and they were probably X, Y and Z based on his children's records" or some such.
6. And anything else that looks like it could be better. The FindAGrave memorial will have a citation at the very bottom of the page. You can click "Show Citation" and then copy/paste it into the bio here, since that's all the info FindAGrave has requested to be used to source them. Link works fine, but the full citation is more informative, especially if the link breaks.

And for complete overkill, you can check out my Research Worksheet Template for additional ideas on types of records to search for. Not all will apply to Martin, timeframes dictate what records exist or are available, but it's a handy little (...big...) checklist for me.