South African Roots Project Reliable Sources

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Reliable Sources

In short: baptisms, marriages, burials, and other acts such as confirmation etc. Notarial deeds/records: marriage contracts, wills, transportakten, etc.

See: South African Resources

Unreliable Sources

• A tree without sources is insufficient as a source for WikiTree profiles.
• Geneanet trees: Geneanet trees are user-contributed trees, many of them unsourced.
  • A tree with precise dates and places will usually be a good guide of where to look for primary records. Please take the time to look for the source and check it for yourself. Do not cite the Geneanet tree as your only source: it is courteous to give credit (under See also); however when the tree exists in multiple copies on the net you may not be crediting the original builder.
  • When a tree does present sources, please take the time to look up the original sources. Give credit.
• Other user-contributed trees: FamilySearch, Ancestry, Geni, MyHeritage, Rootsweb, WikiTree, the Peerage, family association websites, etc. See Geneanet trees.

• Published databases containing information of uncertain origin: There are a number of "records" collections available on websites such as Ancestry and MyHeritage (and in some instance formerly distributed on CD-ROM) that do not identify their information sources and in fact are built in whole or in part from doubtful publications and user-contributed content. These include the "Family Data Collection" and similar sources associated with Edmund West, the "Ancestral File," the "Millennium File," the "Pedigree Resource File," and "U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900."

• Third party indexes: Indexes created outside of the Archives are not considered reliable. They are a good tool to use in order to find an actual record, but are not a reliable source on their own.

Work in Progress

• If your favourite source for South African profiles is missing in the South African Roots Project Resources Archives, please ask a question about it there, or in G2G with the tag SOUTH_AFRICAN_ROOTS - so that the source can be evaluated and added to the page.