Circular sourcing?

+4 votes
236 views
Sometimes sourcing seems to be invented from whole cloth. It is bad enough this was evidently a single mother of 2 and oddly her sister was a single mother. Is this pointing to a certain occupation???

Nevertheless, I was trying to verify a death location. I went to Findagrave and it gave Ancestry as a source. https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=60525&h=54225004&tid=&pid=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=ajH12&_phstart=successSource and yet the source they give at Ancestry lists Findagrave as IT's source. So, who exactly IS the source? And how do I figure out who the father is?

(Note Amanda Unknown is going to be changed to Amanda Foss as she was a single mother. Census records show the maden name.)
WikiTree profile: Amanda Foss
in Genealogy Help by Steven Tibbetts G2G6 Pilot (407k points)
edited by Steven Tibbetts

Not the same exactly, but the lesson is similar - follow the links when adding sources.

I recently was notified that Gedcom import was merged into a profile I manage. It included new and/or different information. The source cited for the information was an Ancestry link, which ended up being a link to Find A Grave. The Find A Grave memorial states: "There is no stone for this memorial. I have put [profile subject] here because his wife is here. Hopefully some family member will hunt for courthouse records to finally put [him] to rest where he belongs. The Find A Grave Memorial for the wife states, with respect to the husband/profile subject: [His] date of death and burial location are unknown. There was a deed for a sale of property in Schuyler County, dated April 25, 1874. That date has been copied over and over again as his date of death. No marker has been found for [him] at Wesley Chapel Cemetery; no will or probate file has been found in Pike, Schuyler or McDonough County.

So there really is no source. I added explanation and uncertainty markers.

Well, at least I found all kinds of new info on her sister Malvena and even found a new older half brother.
I just had a situation where I went to the Family Search link for a profile, and the only source listed was the WikiTree profile I was on.....this is the reason that primary sources are so important.
Yeah, I cracked up the first time I saw WikiTree as the PRIMARY source on Geni I believe.

2 Answers

+3 votes
Did you try searching on FamilySearch?
by Alex Stronach G2G6 Pilot (363k points)
Of course. Familysearch and Google.
+3 votes
What they've got on Ancestry is Find A Grave Index, which FamilySearch also has.  It's an incomplete database dump made a while ago.

So the "source" it cites is just a link to the page that the "index" entry was extracted from - but the link goes to the current version.

Which may of course have got its information from other parts of Ancestry.  And it may have been updated since the database dump was taken for the Index, in which case, it could link to the Index.
by Living Horace G2G6 Pilot (626k points)

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