Trying to edit an incorrect last name for Sarah Warkines

+3 votes
266 views

I have information to contribute to the profile of Sarah (Warkines) Rivers. This is what I can add:  Her correct maiden name was Watkins

These are the sources I am using:

  • Ancestry birth certificate

Should I contact one of the pre-1700 projects or know about any style guidelines before proceeding? Thank you!

WikiTree profile: Sarah Rivers
in Genealogy Help by Jimmy Eaves G2G2 (2.9k points)
retagged by Ellen Smith

2 Answers

+9 votes
Thanks for asking the question! Pre 1700 birth certificates don't exist - they only came in after 1837. Can you say what source you are using? Parish register? This profile needs much more complete citations as per the pre-1700 guidelines.

Here's a page which shows what should be included in citations https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Foundations_OT_-_Citation_templates

I hope that page is useful to you :)

Edited for typos!
by Gill Whitehouse G2G6 Pilot (199k points)
edited by Gill Whitehouse
+6 votes
Unfortunately, none of the profiles for this Rivers family meets our criteria for sources on pre-1700 profiles. All of the citations are bare URLs on Ancestry. They are useless for readers who don't have a paid Ancestry subscription that covers UK. And even for a person who has the necessary subscription,  any bare URL is something like an unidentified phone number in your Contacts list -- it works for contacting a person as long as it is actively maintained by its owner (and they tell you who they are when they answer the phone), but if that situation changes we have no idea what to do with it. (And URLs do get changed, all too often.)

A satisfactory biography  with satisfactory source citations should tell me what you know about the person and where you got the information, with enough detail that another person has a hope of finding the sources after the URLs go bad. I like to see text like "Sarah was baptized at Furbish St. Crispin on 18 March 1683" and source citations that clearly tell me whether the information came from (for example) an electronic image of the parish record or an online index database or ???.  The citation should give whatever details you can find on where Ancestry got the source.

I suggest that you review Help: Sources. There probably are other good sources of relevant advice at the England Project's pages and also in the WikiTree Academy and other "how to" pages.
by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.7m points)
It's worth pointing out that the WikiTree Sourcer browser extension makes citing sources from Ancestry and many other places really easy and quick: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:WikiTree_Sourcer

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