what kind of source info i am required to put on a family member?

+12 votes
174 views
I am very frustrated with this and need to know if i should be just using ancestry
in Policy and Style by Suzanne Heaton G2G Crew (520 points)
Hi Suzanne

I'm sure that one of resident experts will give you an official answer, but, in the meantime.....I would use and every source that you can find to "prove" to your satisfaction that the facts are accurate and can be found by someone else if they were to look.

Ancestry is not a source really, even though the documents that they put on the site can be, but, be wary of family trees put up as you just never know how accurate the research is.

Good luck and I hope that this helped a little.
Dale explains it correctly. Its appropriate to put enough sources to "prove" your case, and I usually keep adding things as I find them. Recently I was adding yet another source to a grandparent who was quite well documented, that her mother's maiden name was also entered. Previously we hadn't been able to find it, so it was quite exciting to find it sitting there, plain as day. I sourced it for both of them.

Dale is also correct that Ancestry.com isn't actually considered a good source when cited all by itself as the documentation provided by its members is often a "he said/she said" rather than an official document. If I'm going to use its information, I try to tease out the original documents like US Census material, copies of family Bible pages, birth certificate, immigration lists.  If those materials come from "ancestry" I don't have a problem with using them.

For me, its a matter of primary vests secondary sources. I'm willing to use secondary materials if that is what is available. But misinformation gets copied from one place to another. (And, I've enough Scottish blood to absolutely hate paying for information that I can get for free elsewhere. )

I use familysearch as each entry points to an original document. And familysearch is free. I like, okay "Love" free.

Hope that helps. Backing up Dale's statement which hits a bull eye for being correct. And don't forget, with Wikitree, although the ancestors closest to you may be bought of as "yours" actually they are "ours" in that our goal is to connect each  profile to the next to become one large human family.

We are all in this together!
Provide enough information to validate your statements of fact.  Ideally that information will enable other researchers to verify that your facts are valid and will be able to find your sources and review their veracity.  In other words, tell us how you know what you know in a way that I can verify for myself.

3 Answers

+7 votes
 
Best answer

Hi Suzanne

Here are some WikiTree Help pages with info about sources:

Welcome to WikiTree and good luck researching your family.

by Maryann Hurt G2G6 Mach 9 (90.8k points)
selected by Dale Gatherum-Goss
+9 votes
Hi Suzanne,

Genealogy is all about facts.  And the only way we can prove the facts is adding our sources.

I will give my personnal exemple.  All my life I knew my father's name as Albert. and my grand pa as Paul.

When I looked at the church records, I found out that my father was called Alban and my grand father Napoléon.

When I started my genealogy, the known names were used.  After reading the sources (church records) I changed the name to their official name.with their known name as ''Other Nick Name''.

And of course, I wrote the sources to prove why I created those profiles as they are.

Like said before, genealogy is all about facts and valid information.  I started to search my g-f-as Paul and I found some but with not the samme wife. When I found his marriage church record as Napoléon I had no troble finding his birth records.

This is why it is important to leave the sources of our research.
by Guy Constantineau G2G6 Pilot (383k points)
edited by Guy Constantineau
+5 votes
Fishing in a big pond like Ancestry can keep you busy, but if you really like fishing, then you need to try all the lakes, ponds and fishing holes.

Wikitree is a great fishing hole and the Anglers here love to share their fishing secrets.  Good luck with that on Ancestry.

You might find the following a worthwhile read.

https://rootsbid.com/blog/why-you-should-have-multiple-family-trees-online/
by Michael Stills G2G6 Pilot (527k points)

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