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Analyze and Organize Your Family Information
HOW TO…
Gathering your family information is fun and exciting. Your research will lead you to many adventures. You will learn a great deal about your family members’ origins and their activities. Placing them in geographical, historical, and social context will also pique your interest in maps, histories, and many other topics. I enjoy “the thrill of the chase” because I always learn something new and I meet such interesting and generous people along the way.
You will certainly acquire original documents, photocopies of original documents, and digitized versions of original documents as you conduct your research. These allow you to personally examine and analyze the information they contain.
It can be frustrating to remember what you thought you had seen on a document and not be able to find that document when you want to examine it again. It therefore is important to organize and file the materials you find in your genealogical quest so that you can find them quickly when you need them. These documents will provide the evidence you need to analyze an ancestor’s life and to better understand his or her life.
Later in the book, we’ll discuss how to go about selecting the genealogy database software program that best suits your needs. Using one of these specialized programs is invaluable for storing your data and generating reports. Before you make that decision, though, there are some essential concepts that form the foundation for all the research and analysis you do. In this chapter, you will learn about the indispensable methodologies for identifying and properly analyzing the evidence you discover, whether that be documents, books, periodicals, manuscripts, photographs, microfilm, cemetery markers, or oral stories. My goal is to help you understand these points and to prepare you to maximize your effectiveness throughout your investigative research process.
Evaluate Primary vs. Secondary Information
One of the most important considerations in your research is adhering to the basic rules of genealogical evidence. You will quickly learn that not every source of information is equal and that some materials are more reliable than others. That means that you will personally evaluate every piece of evidence, regardless of the source, and analyze its strength and value.
In many cases, a piece of documentary evidence is generated as the result of some event: birth, marriage, death, sale of property, voting, taxation, court action, probate process, or some other occasion. Sometimes, though, a record is created before the fact and the event never takes place, as in the case of marriage bonds or marriage licenses issued where the marriage never occurred, tombstones created for an individual who was never buried in the plot, and agreements of sale that were never executed. Are these valid pieces of evidence too? Of course they are, because they were created to represent intent. Even if the intended action never occurred, the piece of evidence places the person(s) involved in a certain place at a specific point in time and tells you something about his or her life. It may lead you to another clue or another piece of evidence.
When evaluating the records of your ancestors’ lives, you must always consider the source of the information. Why was it created? When was it created? Who created it? Is it correct? Information from source materials can be grouped into two categories: primary and secondary information. There are very distinct differences.
Primary information was created at or very near the actual event being recorded and is therefore more likely to be accurate. Secondary information was typically created after the fact and, because of the lapse of time and memory, tends to be less reliable than primary information. Some source materials contain both primary and secondary information. Let’s explore some of the most common types of documentary evidence and evaluate the quality of the information.
Birth Certificates
An example of a source of primary information is an original, photocopy, or scanned image of a birth certificate. The information on this document is typically provided at or just after the time of birth and was completed for the purpose of recording the event. The details about the child’s birth date and time are primary information; the age of the parents, however, is considered secondary information because their births occurred years before.
An amended birth certificate, such as one issued later that changes the information recorded at the time of the birth, may have been intended to provide more accurate or complete information than that which was entered on the original document. Amended birth certificates are also issued for adopted children. There may indeed be other, less correct information placed on those documents just because they were created later.
A delayed birth certificate, which is one issued some time after the event—probably for someone born before birth certificates were issued, born at home with the benefit of a midwife, or whose records were destroyed in a courthouse or other repository—is always a source of secondary information. That is because all of the proof of the date of birth is acquired later and usually from secondary materials.
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Many documents contain a combination of primary and secondary information. It is therefore important to recognize the differences and to differentiate between primary and secondary information. You’ll then be able to determine the weight of the facts more effectively.
Marriage Certificates
Another example of a source of primary information is a marriage certificate. Prior to a marriage, a couple usually must have obtained a license to marry, and a government office typically issued the license. When the marriage was performed, the person officiating at the ceremony signed and dated the license to indicate that the marriage had been completed according to law. The signed license was then returned to the government office for issuance of the official marriage certificate. The signed license is commonly referred to as a “marriage return,” and the information contained in the document was transcribed into a marriage book by a clerk. As the marriage book was filled, it was typically alphabetically indexed in two sequences: by the groom’s name and by the bride’s name. A marriage document transcribed into a marriage book in a courthouse, such as the one shown in Figure 2-1, would be considered a derivative source even though the information was copied into the book shortly after the event. That is because it has been transcribed, or copied by hand, and there is the possibility that the clerk made a transcription error. The entry of an incorrect maiden name on my great-grandparents’ marriage record caused me to spend years searching for the possibility that my great-grandmother had been married before.
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FIGURE 2-1 A marriage license can be a strong source of information. The upper portion of this document is the license; the bottom portion is the “return,” which was completed by the official performing the marriage. The document was then returned to the clerk for registration.
Death Certificates
Some documents can emphatically be a source of both primary and secondary information. A death certificate is considered a source of primary information for details concerning a person’s death, such as the date, time, and location, the name of the mortuary or funeral home that handled the funeral arrangements, and the intended place of interment or disposition of the remains. However, the death certificate is a source of secondary information for all other details, such as the date of birth of the decedent, his or her birthplace, the names of the parents and spouse, the decedent’s occupation, and other information. A government official or coroner completed the information on the death certificate in order to certify the death. That information was provided to the government official or coroner by someone else, such as a relative or friend, and he or she may not have had adequate knowledge of these details or accurate facts. That person is referred to as the “informant.” The death certificate shown in Figure 2-2 contains a great deal of information. The maiden surname of the decedent’s mother, however, was misspelled. It should have been “Whitfield” but the informant apparently did not know the correct spelling. Sometimes you may even see a death certificate on which some data fields are left blank or are marked “unknown.”
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FIGURE 2-2 A death certificate can contain both primary and secondary information. Data about the death is primary, but other details may be secondary, less reliable information.
Every piece of information that does not directly relate to the event for which the source document was prepared should be considered secondary information. You certainly can use secondary information as a clue or pointer to other primary information that verifies or refutes what is on that death certificate.
Let’s examine three examples of sources of secondary information that might contain errors.
Obituaries
An obituary is a written notice of the death of an individual. It typically includes the name of the person, where they lived, the date of death, and information about any planned funeral or memorial service. An obituary may also include biographical information, as well as the names of surviving family members and/or people who preceded the individual in death. There are a number of places where errors may be introduced in an obituary, starting with the informant who provided the information to the writer of the notice. He or she may provide incorrect information. The person taking down the information, such as a funeral home employee or a newspaper copy desk clerk, may omit a word, alter a fact, or introduce spelling or punctuation errors. A newspaper publisher may create errors in the typesetting process, or an editor may either miss catching an error or introduce a mistake. Each person handling the information may potentially contribute to the possibility of errors. The result might be a severe error that leads you on a wild-goose chase. Obituaries published on the Internet are no exception. The example shown in Figure 2-3 contains extensive biographical details, including Mr. Murphy’s age, the street on which he resided, and his place of employment. Important clues to his recent marriage information, the cemetery in which he was buried, and the acronym of a fraternal organization to which he belonged point to other possible documentary evidence.
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FIGURE 2-3 An obituary can contain important biographical information and other clues.
Cemetery Markers
Tombstones such as the one shown in Figure 2-4, grave markers, and memorial plaques placed in cemeteries, mausoleums, and elsewhere may provide clues to sources of primary and/or secondary information. They should always be considered a secondary source. Some are simple and others are more elaborate and may contain great quantities of information. The name and dates on a marker can lead you to search for documents such as birth and death certificates, church or religious records, military records, obituaries, land and property records, wills and probate documents, and other materials.
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FIGURE 2-4 Cemetery markers can provide birth and death information.
Some markers may even be adorned with medallions commemorating military rank or membership in some organization. This information may lead you to other records.
More elaborate markers, like the one shown in Figure 2-5, may provide more information. This stone indicates that Harry was the youngest son of “Benj. & Isabella Green.” His date of death is shown as “Oct. 10, A.D. 1871” and his age as “8 years and 6 months.” This detailed information provides a link to the parents’ information and would encourage you to seek details concerning the child’s date of birth and the cause of his death.
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FIGURE 2-5 Elaborate marker for Harry Green at Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia
Like obituaries, though, gravestones and memorial plaques are created based on information provided to the creator of the marker and may contain erroneous information. It is not unknown for a stone carver to make a mistake. For example, the surname on one gravestone in an old cemetery in downtown Tampa, Florida, is misspelled. Instead of replacing the stone, however, someone returned to carve a slash mark through the incorrect letter and inscribe the corrected letter above. A marker in the historic cemetery in St. Marys, Georgia, was incorrectly carved, and the stonecutter used a stone cement to fill the incorrect letter and then re-carved it. The error is still visible on the stone. Remember that the stone carver is only inscribing what was provided and that he or she, too, can introduce errors.
Another problem with tombstones is that, unless you were involved with the purchase or placement of a marker on a grave, you may have no idea when the stone was created or installed. Families could not always afford to install a marker for a grave. As a result, it may have been years or decades before a stone was ordered and installed. (The cemetery office may have a record of when the marker was set in place.) While the information you see is “set in stone,” always seek corroboration elsewhere of the facts engraved there. I wrote an article for Ancestry.com that will provide you with additional information on this subject. It is titled “Tombstones Are Secondary Sources” and can be found at www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=2840.
Bible Entries
It is a natural assumption for us to make that what is entered in the family Bible is correct, but these entries can be misleading as well. Remember that birth, marriage, death, and other information could have been made at any time. There are several items to look for when examining entries made in a Bible that may indicate that they are not primary information:
Recognize and Evaluate Original vs. Derivative Sources
Another important consideration in your research is whether the evidence you find is an original or derivative source. By that, I mean that the material is either an original document or has been taken (derived) from some other source. Derivative source material might include such things as word-of-mouth accounts, information transcribed from other materials, information extracted or abstracted from the original sources, or anything else that is not the genuine, original source.
The original sources you use are indeed the actual documents or other materials created for the purpose of recording something. A marriage certificate would certainly be an original source document, but a marriage entry in the courthouse register would not. An exact photocopy, a microfilm image, a photograph, or a scanned document image can be considered identical to the original source.
Derivative sources are a different story. As we’ve already discussed, anytime someone copies or transcribes something, there is a possibility that an error may be introduced. In the course of your genealogical research, you will work with many different materials. Sometimes it is impossible to obtain a photocopy or an exact image of the material. As a result, you will spend time copying information by hand. What you are doing is “deriving” information from the original source, regardless of whether it is a document, a tombstone, an engraved piece of jewelry, or another original source item.
Understand Types of Derivative Sources
Genealogists know that there are three basic types of derivative sources: a transcription, an extract, and an abstract. Let’s discuss the attributes of each of these materials.
Transcription
A transcription is an exact written copy of an original source material. The operative word here is “exact.” That means that you are working from the original and are copying its content exactly, word for word, and preserving the spelling and punctuation precisely as it appears in the source document. Since it is possible for you to make transcription errors, it is important that you carefully check your work to ensure that you don’t omit or introduce any additional words or characters, and that you don’t make any alteration to the content or intent. If you find that you must make a personal notation in the transcription for clarity, enclose it in square brackets and precede your text with the Latin word sic. For example, if you encounter a name spelled as Lizzy and you know that it was spelled differently, you might notate it as follows: [sic, Elizabeth].
Consider the situation in which a will for a certain man included a list of his six children. The list included “John, Paul, Edward, Polly, Ann, and Elizabeth.” If you transcribed these names and omitted the comma between John and Paul, you or a subsequent researcher might read your transcription and conclude that there were only five children instead of six. A conclusion might be drawn that the first name was “John Paul” rather than the two names, John and Paul. This could be confusing for you and for any other researchers reading your supposedly accurate transcription.
Extract
In the case of a lengthy document, you might decide to copy only portions of the original that pertain specifically to an individual you are researching. An extract is similar to a transcription except that, instead of copying the entire document, you excerpt and copy only portions of the original. You still copy the content of the section(s) in which you are interested, word for word, and preserve the spelling and punctuation as it appears in the source document. However, you omit portions that you feel are unimportant to your research.
Extracting from original source materials is a common practice. It also is a source of many errors. An index of names and other information created from original documents can really be an extract or an abstract. People sometimes, in their haste to gather information, make transcription errors or omit important details, which may adversely impact their work and that of other researchers who access and use it. You can protect the integrity of your own research by using extracts, such as indexes, to direct you to the original source material. It is always good to obtain a copy of the entire source document, if at all possible. You can evaluate its contents yourself, and you may find at a later date that you would like to refer to the original to reconfirm your work, provide a copy to another researcher, or look for additional details that may have seemed irrelevant to your earlier research.
Published extracts can be especially problematic in some cases. Remember that, when an extract is prepared, much material can be left behind. The loss of details, language, spelling, and punctuation can adversely impact your or someone else’s research. In the case of African-American research, for example, an extract of a slaveholder’s will may ignore the names of slaves bequeathed, sold, or freed under the terms of the will. Those details may be unimportant to one of the slaveholder’s descendants. However, descendants of the slaves would be very interested in the existence of their antecedents’ names in the will. As a result, the extract would be useless to the African-American researcher unless he or she traced the genealogy of the slaveholder and personally examined the original of the will.
It is important to indicate in your work that what you have copied is, in fact, an extract from the original document. This will communicate to you or to other researchers reviewing your work later that there is, in fact, more content in the original document.
Abstract
Another type of derivative work is the abstract. Unlike the transcription or extraction, an abstract does not seek to preserve the content of the original source. Instead, an abstract merely describes the content of the original source. It contains far less detail than even an extract and may only list what the researcher feels is pertinent to his or her research. An abstract represents the researcher’s interpretation of the original material. It may enclose in quotation marks exact text to indicate verbatim material copied from the original document. An abstract of a slaveholder’s will might consist of only the family and heirs of the slaveholder, and might altogether omit any mention of the slaves.
Depending on the knowledge, insight, and skill of the researcher, the information derived from the original and documented in the abstract may contain errors. His or her interpretation, hypothesis, and/or conclusion may be correct but, then again, it may be flawed as a result of taking information out of its original documentary context.
Avoid Errors in Derivative Sources
As you can see, there potentially are problems with each of these forms of derivative sources. If errors are introduced at any point by the researcher, these often are disseminated to other researchers. As a result, an error may be perpetuated and, because it appears again and again in many researchers’ work, the error may come to be considered “fact.” You therefore want to use extreme caution when you encounter other people’s transcription, extraction, and abstraction work. Always try to obtain a copy of the original source so that you can examine it yourself. Your hypotheses and conclusions may differ from those of another researcher. By personally reviewing and analyzing the original document, you can apply your own knowledge and insight into your own ancestry in arriving at your own conclusions.
You will certainly do your own share of derivative work, and fortunately there are some excellent forms available on the Internet. Among the best are those at Ancestry.com at www.ancestry.com/trees/charts/researchext.aspx. Here you will find a Research Extract form, as well as census forms for the U.S. federal census population schedules, 1790–1930; UK censuses, 1841–1901; and various Canadian censuses. Genealogy.com also offers an excellent selection of U.S. federal census forms at www.genealogy.com/00000061.html. You can also find any number of forms for extracting and abstracting wills, deeds, property descriptions, and other documents by searching on the Internet. The forms are especially helpful as guides to help ensure that you capture information.
Apply Critical Thinking Skills to Your Genealogical Research
As you have seen, the examination of source materials can tell you a great deal. Personal analysis is a key activity in determining the strength of the evidence you discover. You are acting like an investigative journalist or a crime scene investigator, investigating the scene, the events, the people, and the story. You should always ask questions about the who, when, where, what, how, and why of your ancestor’s life events. In addition to merely reporting the story, you will analyze information and evidence, and develop realistic hypotheses. Like a journalist, you have the equipment, knowledge, skills, and a structured methodology to apply to your investigation. Your job is to bring all of these factors together for the purpose of identifying, classifying, and analyzing the evidence you find.
One thing you will do in your genealogical research is to employ your critical thinking skills to the evaluation of the evidence you find. This is an imperative in your work because you have to determine what information you have and the quality or reliability of the sources. There are five basic evaluation criteria you will use, and these should be applied to everything you evaluate, from printed resources to electronic and Internet materials to physical objects and heirlooms.
A component of your critical thinking skills is what you have learned throughout your life, coupled with a healthy dose of common sense. Another piece is the knowledge you will acquire as you continue encountering and working with new and different types of genealogical source materials. You cannot take anything for granted, but should instead measure the evidence by the five criteria listed here:
With all of this in mind, you should maintain a healthy skepticism in your investigation. Be wary of information that seems too good to be true. You can expect to encounter some brick walls in your research. This book will teach you ways of approaching apparent dead ends and circumventing brick walls in your research, and how to use alternative research strategies and substitute record types in the process.
Place Your Ancestors into Context
English poet John Donne is famous for his Meditation XVII, in which he states, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” He asserts that all of mankind is interconnected, and all a part of one another’s history and activities. This is as true in our genealogical research of the past generations as it is of today. Our ancestors lived in specific places and time periods, and they witnessed and participated in events and activities as surely as we ourselves do.
It is essential during your research process to learn as much about your ancestors’ lives and times as possible so that you can better understand them. That means learning about the geography of the places where they lived, including where the jurisdictional boundaries of their state, province, country, or territories were drawn. You also must become a student of the history of the places and times in which your ancestors lived. This will help you understand what their lives were like and perhaps the motivations for some of their actions. Major cataclysms as well as ordinary events shaped the lives of our ancestors. Consider, for example, the Potato Famine in Ireland in the 1840s, which, according to some sources, caused more than 1.5 million starving Irish citizens to migrate to North America. Or perhaps the rule of primogeniture, under which the oldest son inherited the land of his father and may have forced one or more younger sons to leave home to make his own way in the world. Your investigation of the place, history, culture, and climate where your ancestors lived and where they may have migrated will serve you well in understanding their lives, what records may have been created by and about them, and where these materials may now be located.
Format Names, Dates, and Locations Correctly
Gathering information about your family is one thing; recording it in a format that can be understood and used by others is quite another. Genealogists use a number of standardized forms for this purpose, and genealogy database software programs can produce printed versions of these forms as a result of data entered into and stored in their programs. Let it suffice to say that genealogists have standards for the entry of data. Let’s discuss each type of data and the standards that are universally used. Figure 2-6 demonstrates how information should be properly formatted.
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FIGURE 2-6 A pedigree or ancestor chart showing formatted names, dates, and locations
Record Names
People’s names are entered using their first name (also referred to as a given name or forename), full middle name(s), and surname (last name). A woman’s name is always recorded with her first name, her middle name, and her maiden surname. While it is not mandatory to do so, a great many genealogists capitalize the entire surname, as in the following examples:
Green Berry HOLDER
Laura Augusta WILSON
Capitalization of surnames is sometimes done in written correspondence, such as letters, emails, online message boards, mail list postings, and other communiqués, because it causes the surnames to be easily seen. Genealogy software programs also offer the option when creating reports and charts to capitalize surnames. If someone is scanning a written document, the capitalized surname jumps out at him or her.
Record Dates
The United States uses a format for dates that is different from the format used in most parts of the world. Whereas most Americans usually write a date in the format June 14, 1905, in their documents and correspondence, much of the rest of the world writes it as 14 June 1905. From a consistency standpoint, you always want to use the DD MONTH YYYY format for all of your genealogical work. You will find that using this standard makes communicating with other genealogists worldwide easier.
Record Locations
When conducting your research, you will find that boundaries, place names, and political/governmental jurisdictions have changed throughout time, sometimes more than once. It is important for you to seek records in the correct place. That means learning what governmental or other official entity had jurisdiction over a place at the time your ancestor lived there and at the time a specific record was created. It also means working with both contemporary and historical maps. For example, some of my early Morgan ancestors settled in the mid-1750s in what was then Orange County, Province of North Carolina, in the American colonies. Today, the exact area in which they settled is divided into Caswell and Person Counties.
The way in which you record locations in your research should reflect the name of the place, the county, parish, or other geopolitical area in which it was located, and the state, province, and country. Yes, country jurisdictions changed too. In those cases, it is important to also include the country name. Here are some examples:
Location Record It As
Madison, North Carolina Madison, Rockingham County, North Carolina, USA or Madison (Rockingham) North Carolina
Rome, Georgia Rome, Floyd County, Georgia, USA or Rome (Floyd) Georgia
Montreal, Canada Montreal, Québec, Canada
Barkham in Berkshire, England Barkham, Berkshire, England
Certainly be careful to record the correct geopolitical entity for the location at the time the event occurred. This is essential because that is the place where the records were recorded and where they are probably still archived. For example, if I wanted to record the marriage of one ancestor in that area in Yanceyville, North Carolina, in 1761, I would record the birth location in the following manner:
Reuben MORGAN    24 August 1761    Yanceyville (Orange) North Carolina
The marriage date of his son, which occurred in the same community after the formation of Caswell County in 1777, would be recorded as follows:
William MORGAN    22 December 1783    Yanceyville (Caswell) NC USA
The difference in the county name distinguishes the fact that the event occurred under a different governmental jurisdiction. Therefore, if I want to obtain a copy of Reuben’s marriage record, I would contact or visit the Orange County courthouse in Hillsborough, North Carolina, whereas I would visit the Caswell County courthouse in Yanceyville, North Carolina, for William’s marriage record. It is acceptable to abbreviate a state, province, or country as long as you use an acknowledged abbreviation. You will note in the first example above that I did not list the country as USA but did so in the second example. That is because there was no official United States of America until the Declaration of Independence was signed on 4 July 1776.
Suffice it to say that it is vitally important to properly identify the right location and to record it as part of your records. If you are researching your ancestry in Germany, you will want to study history of the states, duchies, kingdoms, and states and their periods to help determine where to search for specific records when your ancestor lived there. If you are researching Polish ancestors, you will need to study Poland’s history. It has been an independent country but it also has been partitioned and absorbed over the centuries by Russia, Germany, and Austria. Record the correct location for each piece of evidence you find as it existed at the time the information or source was created.
Work with Pedigree Charts
Now that you know how to collect, evaluate, and analyze evidence, and know how data is to be formatted, it’s time to learn about the forms that genealogists use to enter their data.
One of these forms is known as a pedigree chart, and is sometimes known by other names, such as “ancestral chart” or “family tree chart.” These forms come in a variety of styles and typically represent three or more generations. Let’s begin our discussion by looking at some examples. Ancestry.com provides their Ancestral Chart at http://c.ancestry.com/pdf/trees/charts/anchart.pdf (see Figure 2-7).
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FIGURE 2-7 Ancestry.com’s Ancestral Chart
Pedigree charts are used to represent multiple generations of direct ancestry. The downloadable chart shown in Figure 2-7 can be used to represent four generations. Others you might locate through retail stores or on the Internet may represent three or more generations. Some versions may be used to represent as many as 10, 12, 16, or more generations. These latter specimens are usually intended for showy displays, but some genealogists will use the larger format as a working document in order to have their direct family lineage shown on a single sheet.
Let’s use your own family as an example and use the Ancestry.com Ancestral Chart form as a worksheet. Remember I said you should start with yourself? That’s what you do here. Enter as much information as you have and enter it in pencil so you can change it later as needed. Fill in your name on the line in the center of the left side of the page. Enter your surname in all capital letters (uppercase). If you are married, you may fill in his or her name on the line below. Remember that you should enter a woman’s maiden name using her surname. Under your name on line 1, enter your date of birth (in the format of DD MONTH YYYY such as 24 August 1985), the place of your birth (in the format of City (County) State Country or appropriate format), the date of your marriage to the person listed below you, if appropriate, and the place of the marriage. We will assume that you are not yet deceased, of course, so you can leave the areas for date of death and location blank.
The next pair of lines to the right represent your father (at the top) and your mother (below your father’s entry). Enter his birth, marriage, and (if applicable) death dates and locations for each person. Please note that marriage information is always listed on pedigree charts under the male, assuming the parents were married. Enter your mother’s name using her first, middle, and maiden name, and enter her maiden name in capital letters. Enter her birth and, if applicable, death dates and locations. You may not yet have all the names or other information. That’s the purpose of genealogical research.
The next column consists of lines to represent your grandparents—your father’s father and mother and your mother’s father and mother. Fill in these people’s names and any vital information you know.
The next column contains lines to represent your great-grandparents. Fill in as many names, dates, and locations as you can.
You have probably discovered already that you have gaps in your family knowledge. You may also be unsure about some of the information you entered. That’s okay, though. That’s why we typically enter the data in pencil, so that we can change or correct it as we locate evidence of the facts.
Next, you will notice that there are places for chart numbers to be entered. This provides a way for you to organize and cross-reference charts. For example, you may have obtained information on your great-grandparents’ parents and beyond. Since you don’t have enough room on this chart to represent them, you will need a new pedigree chart for those persons. Let’s say you start a new chart for your great-grandfather. On the new chart, his name will be listed on the line on the left, just as your name was listed on the first chart. His spouse will be entered below, and his parents’ (your great-great-grandparents) names will be entered on the lines in the next column, and so on. You may label this as Chart 2. Label the first chart you completed Chart 1. Now, cross-reference them as follows:
You have now cross-referenced the charts for easy navigation back and forth. You will want to create a binder to hold your pedigree charts. File your own generation on top, followed by other generations in sequence.
Work with Family Group Sheets
While the pedigree or ancestral chart represents a single thread of descent, a family group sheet (or family group record) is a representation of a complete family unit: father, mother, and all children. You potentially will prepare a family group sheet for every family unit you document. An example of Ancestry.com’s Family Group Record document is shown in Figure 2-8, and a free downloadable version is available at Ancestry.com at www.ancestry.com/trees/charts/familysheet.aspx. Some family group sheets include spaces for recording the sources of the information that you have found. The Source Summary for Family Information from Ancestry.com at www.ancestry.com/trees/charts/sourcesum.aspx can be used in conjunction with their Family Group Record document to keep track of the origin of the evidence you use to document the facts. Please take a few minutes to download and print copies of these sheets now.
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FIGURE 2-8 Ancestry.com’s Family Group Record
The family group sheet begins by asking for the name of the preparer and his or her address. In the event you share a copy of this form with another person, he or she will be able to contact you with questions or to share their research with you. You also have a place at the top of the form to cross-reference this sheet to a pedigree chart.
This form contains space for substantially more information than the pedigree chart, but the sources and types of information are pretty self-explanatory. You will note, though, two interesting columns for the children. The first is one with an asterisk (*) at the top, representing whether or not the father and mother are direct ancestors. Remember, some children in a family unit may be from another marriage and may have been adopted by the new spouse. The other column is for Computer ID. You may decide to cross-reference this chart with entries in a computer program, and this column can facilitate that effort.
What if you have the name of one person and not the name of his or her spouse? What if you only know a wife’s first name and not her maiden name? What if you know there was a child but you don’t know his or her name? Leave the information blank, or add a question mark, backslashes (//), or some other notation to indicate missing data. You can always return to enter it when you locate it.
Take a few minutes to complete a family group sheet for your parents’ family unit, and include information about your siblings and yourself. Any facts you don’t know can be left blank for now. You can come back to complete them later when you have located documentation of the facts.
You have a good idea now about recording information on a pedigree chart and a family group sheet. However, there are always exceptions in families that need to be recorded. Let’s examine three such circumstances that you may encounter.
Record Multiple Family Units with a Common Spouse
What do you do when a spouse died or a couple divorced and a spouse remarried? How do you represent that? The answer is that you create a new family group sheet for the new family couple and for their family unit. Children produced from this union are included on this separate sheet.
How to Handle Nontraditional Family Units
There have always been family units operating without the benefit of marriage. With an increasing number of same-sex marriages or civil unions taking place in many places worldwide, there now is a need to record those family units and relationships. Whatever the arrangement and whoever the people are, it is important to record the family unit “as is.” Therefore, when you record two individuals in a relationship, portray it on a family group sheet. If there was no marriage, indicate it as NONE. Most genealogy database programs today now allow you to represent a relationship status with such codes as “friends,” “married,” “partners,” “single,” “private,” “other,” or “unknown.” You should be honest about relationships where known unless the publication of such knowledge would be detrimental or hurtful in some way. If there are children produced from a nontraditional pairing, show them as you normally would, as issue from the union.
How to Handle Adopted Children
A common question is how to handle adopted children on a family group sheet. Should you include them? The answer is, of course, an emphatic yes. Adopted children are part of the family unit, regardless of the identities of their birth parents. The adopted child’s birth parents, if known, can be recorded in the notes section of your family group sheet or in the notes area of a genealogy database program. However, the adoption formalizes the legal relationship between the child and his or her adoptive parents and should become the primary family relationship represented in your records.
Most genealogy database software programs now allow for the identification of a child’s relationship to its parents. The Family Tree Maker program (produced by Ancestry.com), for example, provides values of Natural, Adopted, Step, Foster, Related, Guardian, Sealed, Private, and Unknown.
Remember that adoption may be a sensitive topic for the adoptee, his or her parents, or some other family members. You will therefore want to be considerate about publishing the information outside the family circle. That does not mean you shouldn’t record it in your records. However, many of the genealogy database programs allow for the omission of the parent-child relationship information when reports are produced or data files are created.
Create Source Citations for Your Data
When you were in school and preparing term papers, you were probably required to prepare a bibliography of your source materials. You may also have used footnotes and endnotes for individual fact or quotation references. This is the scholarly way to document research because it provides details for the reader or subsequent researcher to retrace your work.
As you collect information, evidence, documents, and other materials for your family history research, it is essential to record where you found them. You want to provide a record for yourself and any other genealogical researcher so that he or she can retrace your steps, locate the material you used, and personally examine it. Your interpretation of data may be different from someone else’s. The fact that you may actually be looking for different information may influence what you search for, what you believe is important, and the way you interpret it in your family’s application. One seemingly insignificant name to you in an ancestor’s will may be just the “missing link” that another researcher has been seeking for years.
Your source citations will generally follow standard bibliographic citation standards for books, magazines, journals, and other printed sources. Students and researchers know that there are several citation formats, but typically the style used by genealogists resembles the standards of the Modern Language Association (MLA) or The Chicago Manual of Style. The structure of your source citations should contain all essential information that will help another researcher identify and locate the source material you used. However, the citation format may not necessarily adhere precisely to either of these styles. The following are examples of some of the more common source materials.
Book
Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2009.
Magazine Article
Morgan, George G. “Magical Minutes Make Memorable Meetings.” Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly, March 2011.
Newspaper Article
Pilarczyk, Jamie. “Learning History’s Lessons.” Tampa Tribune, 10 September 2008. B3.
Newspaper Article on the Internet
Pilarczyk, Jamie. “Learning History’s Lessons.” Tampa Tribune, 10 September 2008. <http://centraltampa2.tbo.com/content/2008/sep/10/st-learning-history-lessons/>. Accessed 17 September 2008.
Family Bible (One-of-a-Kind)
Family data, Morgan Family Bible, The Holy Bible, new edition (New York, NY: Christian Book Publishers, Inc., 1921); original owned in 2011 by George G. Morgan (229 N. Dalton Street, Anytown, FL 33333).
 
Print materials make up a sizeable portion of reference material for genealogists. However, we work with an amazing array of materials, including letters, postcards, journals, diaries, deeds, census records, birth certificates, marriage licenses, christening and baptismal records, bar and bat mitzvah records, wills, probate packets, obituaries, ships’ passenger lists, naturalization records, medical records, tombstones, engraved jewelry, furniture, embroidered samplers, and much, much more. We work with all types of media as well: paper, microfilm, microfiche, CD-ROMs, computer files, databases, photographs and slides, PDF files, scanned images, records found on the Internet or exchanged electronically in such media as email and data files, blogs, wikis, podcasts, webinars, and in other online virtual environments.
As you can imagine, few citation style guides can anticipate every possible source used by genealogical researchers. The MLA standard provides an appropriate general framework for genealogical source citations. The essential components of every citation are the name of the author or creator, a title or description of the source, where the source was published and who published it, and the date of creation or publication. In addition, if the source is a rare or one-of-a-kind item, it is important to include the place where it resides and/or where you accessed it. Here are examples of just a few sources unique to genealogical research and appropriate citation formats for them.
Cemetery Marker (Large Cemetery)
Green Berry Holder tombstone; section New Front Addition, Terrace 1, Lot #1, Myrtle Hill. Cemetery, Rome, Floyd County, Georgia, USA; transcribed by the writer on 14 July 1998.
Cemetery Marker (Small Rural Cemetery)
Caroline Alice Whitefield Morgan Carter tombstone, Cooper Cemetery, Caswell County, North Carolina (Ridgeville township, Latitude 36° 17’ 15” North, Longitude 79° 12’ 02” West), photographed by George G. Morgan on 24 August 2011.
Microfilm of U.S. Federal Census
Green B. Holder household, 1870 U.S. census, Subdivision 141, Floyd County, Georgia, page 102, line 22; National Archives micropublication M593, roll 149.
Email Message
Mary A. Morgan, “Your Great-grandmother Patterson,” email message from <mam@auntmary190505.com> (106 E. Hunter Street, Madison, NC 27025) to author, 14 June 2011.
Blog
Danko, Stephen. “Steve’s Genealogy Blog,” online <http://stephendanko.com/blog/13731>. “The Birth and Baptism of Ambrozy Goła’ś 1859,” downloaded 3 May 2011.
 
The amount of information included varies with the type of source material you use, what it provides, and in some cases where it is physically located. You will want to learn all about citing your sources so that you do a scholarly job. The very best genealogical source citation reference book on the market today is Elizabeth Shown Mills’ definitive book Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, published by Genealogical Publishing Company. (You’ll note that I used this work above as a representative source citation example for a book.) It is an excellent resource for the serious genealogist, and I heartily recommend it as a part of your core personal reference library.
The more information you locate, the more important it is to have clearly documented the sources. You will soon learn from personal experience that it is often impossible to recall the origin of a particular piece of information. Source citations are invaluable when retracing your own research and are essential as documentation for other researchers’ use in trying to retrace and verify your work.
You will always want to perform effective and scholarly research on your family history. That means identifying and using the best possible source materials you can locate, analyzing them carefully, weighing the evidence, formulating reasonable hypotheses, and drawing realistic conclusions. It combines all the skills discussed so far in this chapter, and these comprise the basic rules of genealogical evidence.
Select a Family Tree Format
Throughout this chapter, I’ve discussed the mechanics of collecting, analyzing, recording, and citing sources for your family history data. Now is the time to start considering just how to record and display your data.
As you read the header of this section, you probably are thinking, “How can there be more than one format of a family tree?” Actually, there are a number of different ways to view family data, and each one can help you analyze what you have discovered in perhaps a different way. Genealogists also have their own preferences about which display format they use. For example, you should know that there are two major family tree display formats: the standard chart format and the fan chart format. The standard format shown in Figure 2-9 presents a vertical, linear view of two generations. The double, parallel lines linking individuals indicates their marriage or union.
image
FIGURE 2-9 A standard, two-generation family tree chart. (Generated from the author’s copy of the RootsMagic genealogy database program.)
The same data can be displayed in a fan format, as shown in Figure 2-10, starting with the focus individual and his or her spouse, and additional generations’ information extending in semicircular bands by generation.
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FIGURE 2-10 Sample of descendants chart in fan format. (Generated from the author’s copy of the Reunion genealogy database program for the Mac.)
As you are working with your family genealogy, you will find it useful to be able to create both ancestor and descendant tree views. An ancestor chart starts with one individual as its focal point and presents a picture of that person’s ancestors. A descendant chart starts with an individual and shows his or her descendants. The number of generations represented on any chart is your option. In the examples shown in Figures 2-9 and 2-10, only two generations are represented. You also can choose to include as much or as little information as you like. At the very minimum, however, you should include each individual’s name, date of birth, date of marriage (if any), and date of death (if deceased). The location of each of these events is important, and you may want to include that data as well.
In addition to the standard and fan formats of the ancestor and descendant chart formats, there are some other formats as well. An hourglass tree combines the features of both the ancestor and descendant tree views. In Figure 2-11, my great-grandfather, Rainey B. Morgan is the focal individual, with his wife, Caroline A. Whitfield, shown at his side and their union being indicated with the double lines linking them. Rainey’s parents, Goodloe W. Morgan and Mary L. Woods, and his two sets of grandparents, Reuben Morgan and Mary Merritt, and William Woods and Mary Farley, are shown above him as his ancestors. Rainey’s three sons, Samuel G. Morgan, William R. Morgan, Sr., and John A. Morgan, are shown as descendants, and their respective wives are shown beside them, again with the unions represented by double lines.
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FIGURE 2-11 An hourglass family tree chart. (Generated from the author’s copy of the RootsMagic genealogy database program.)
All of the tree formats discussed above really are just that: tree formats. They are called trees because they begin somewhere with a root individual and branch out from there. The format that you will encounter most for representing lineal family relationships is the pedigree chart that we discussed earlier in the chapter. It is an ancestral tree representation, but is by far the most commonly used representation in day-to-day genealogy work.
Blank pedigree charts, as you have seen, can be downloaded from the Internet. They also can be purchased in many formats and range from as few as 3 generations to as many as 12 or even more. These can be completed manually. Genealogy database software programs can also produce pedigree charts whose contents and formats you can customize.
You will want to experiment with the various formats to determine which one you like best and/or which one best represents your family data. Although it is time-consuming to complete a family tree chart by hand, many people do just that. Sometimes they create a display-quality tree using graphics, photographs, and calligraphic text. These can be framed and displayed as family heirlooms.
On the other hand, you will find that there are a number of genealogy database software programs available. You enter your data and source citations, even photographs, and can produce a variety of customized, computer-generated reports. Those reports include pedigree charts, family group sheets, and family trees in the standard, fan, hourglass, and other formats. Some of these databases also facilitate writing and publishing a quality family history, while others can produce HTML files containing your family data for web pages.
With all this foundation work under your belt now, let’s proceed into the wealth of record types and what they can tell us. Let’s move on to Chapter 3.