Project: Acadians/Before You Add a Profile

Thank you for your interest in the Acadians Project!

You were probably directed to this page because you have Acadian ancestors that you want to add to WikiTree. That's great! We want everyone to be able to connect to their Acadian ancestors and find out how we're all related to each other. But many Acadians already have profiles here, and we want to make sure we don't create duplicates.

Contents

Avoiding Duplicates

Here are a few quick steps you should take before creating any new Acadian profiles (at least from before 1800 or so):

  1. Do a search for the person you want to add. It's a good idea to try a few spellings. Definitely try using the standard spellings we use for the early Acadians.
  2. Check Category:Acadians. All of the Acadian profiles that have been identified by the project so far should be listed there alphabetically.
  3. If the person was in Acadia in 1671, check our 1671 Acadian Census page. Almost everyone from that census is already on WikiTree.

If you've checked those places, you're welcome to add your Acadian profiles to WikiTree. Just be sure to use the standard spellings for the early Acadians. If you have a large number of profiles to add, like an entire family line, it's still a good idea to work together with the project leaders to make sure things go smoothly.

Citing Sources

There are a lot of persistent myths in Acadian genealogy. One of our goals in the Acadians Project is to eliminate those myths from our tree. To that end, we ask that you cite sources for any new Acadian profiles you create.

Original Sources

Original sources are sources where the information was provided by the people themselves, as opposed to being compiled by later researchers. Examples of original sources for the Acadians include:

  • Census records
  • Baptism, marriage, and burial records
  • Déclarations de Belle-Ile-en-Mer (but watch out for people giving information about their ancestors! They make mistakes!)
  • Please add more to this list!

Derivative Sources

Derivative sources are not original records, but research compiled after the fact. There is a wide range in quality of derivative sources.

The best derivative source for Acadian genealogy, which we use frequently in this project, is the work of Stephen White. Acadian genealogy is his life's work, and his compiled information on the early Acadian families is very reliable. Adding White's analysis of a family is encouraged.

Nos Origines is a user-contributed online family tree, but in our experience proves significantly more reliable than most online trees. While it is better to use original sources (and when there is disagreement, original sources win), Nos Origines is much better than nothing.

Other derivative sources should generally be avoided, as they tend to introduce too many errors. Our project members prefer to spend their time writing great biographies and adding missing family members rather than fixing the errors that have become widespread in personal online family trees.



This page was last modified 20:21, 28 April 2020. This page has been accessed 218 times.