Celebration Sunday~Genealogy Happy Dance!

You know the dance. You know you've done it. The one every researcher does after finding something new. The one where you want to jump up and down and shout to everyone around that you found the document, contacted a cousin who has the family Bible, made a DNA connection or found a whole new branch to your tree. The one that is met with glazed stares and eye rolls.
                                                          Celebration Sunday is a place to share your discoveries. 
This is a weekly series to enable everyone to tell about their Genealogy Happy Dance moment. This can be done by scrolling down and adding your story to the comments section. You may also put a link to a blog post.

                                                                           Let's celebrate and dance together.
                                                                                A No Eye Rolling Zone!

My Happy Dance This Week: 
 A cousin who connected through the blog sent me a 6-page report on the descendants of my Great-Great Grandmother's sister. That was wonderful, but the best part? It is sourced! Happy Dance for sure!
   
                                                                           

                                                                                           Share your discovery!

                                                                                   Let the dancing commence!

Are we kin? Please contact me. Together we can find our people.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Motivational Monday~Evidence:What's Your Type?

       This month Evidence Analysis was the topic for my Progen Study Group. Our assignment was to take the records gathered for one individual and analyze them using the following criteria:

  A source is either:
      Original- first form
      Derivative-made from the original (index, transcription, abstract etc.
      Authored-Publish works

 The information is either-
      Primary-First hand account
      Secondary-Second hand account
      Undetermined-not known who gave information

The evidence is either:
      Direct-answers the research question itself
      Indirect- implies and answer but more needed
      Negative-absence of information that should have been there
   

   Why should you take the time to look at your sources and determine each of these criteria? Because not all sources are the same. The accuracy of the information contained in them depends on the type of record, who gave the information and how close to the actual time period it was made. A record that has been indexed,  or transcribed can be flawed due to human error. 
  Going through the analysis process will help determine if the information collected provides enough to come to a reasonable conclusion or if more research needs to be done. 
    
My analysis of the records of William J. Dorrity, my maternal 3rd Great Grandfather contains these types of sources. 
   Census Records from 1850-1880 are categorized as Original (digital copies), the information they contain is secondary (taken by the census taker but it's not known who gave the information), and they contain direct answers to the questions (whether they are true or not).  The 1900 census showed negative evidence of William Dorrity. He was not listed in the census and his wife was recorded as a widow. This "negative" evidence helps to pinpoint a year of death.

Martha Doherty
Recorded as Widowed
1900 Sumter County Census
Image from ancesty.com

 Military Records from the Civil War are Derivative (records made from copies other records), with primary information (made at the time of the event), and Direct evidence of military service and other information provided by the record.
     

W.J. Dority
Co. G, SC 20th Infantry
Muster Roll
Image from Fold3.com

  Newspapers provide Original (digital copies) information. Usually, a newspaper article was written about an event that recently happened and it can be classified as primary. This was the case with the newspaper accounts of William J. Dorrity's land being adjacent to another piece of land in a legal notice and the listing of his wife Martha in a Widow's Pension list. The legal notice is direct evidence that William owned land and where it was, and the Widow's Pension list is indirect evidence of the year of his death. 
           

Martha Dority
Widow's Pension List
Watchman and Southron
26 May 1897 pg. 7
Image from Newspapers.com

     Records can have more than one type of evidence. Usually, a death certificate is primary information of a person's death, cause, and burial, with the birth date and place being secondary. This is due to the fact that the death information is recorded near the time of death but the birth information is supplied many years after the fact and depending on the informant, it is at best secondary and often not reliable. 
  A family Bible can be primary information if each event recorded was done at the time it happened. It can also contain secondary information if births, marriages and deaths were written years after the fact. 

  If you haven't done so, take a look at your documents and other records. Analyzing the types of information they contain will help  determine whether you have good solid evidence or if you need to continue searching. 
 For more information go to: Cindy's List-Evidence Analysis
And for software that can help put it all together, I recommend using Evidentia.

Are we kin? Please contact me. Together we can find our people.
Thanks so much for stopping by.






 

   

Genealogy Do-Over Week 5: Toolbox and Citations~Learning From Past Mistakes

Genealogy Do-Over Week 5 has us looking at building a Research Tool Box & Citing Sources.

My Research Toolbox only needed a little help, but my early source citations...well, that's another story!

My Research Toolbox
  Thanks to Thomas McEntee and his Reserach Toolbox Webinars, I started a Toolbox several years ago.
   For the web sites that I visit daily, I have them bookmarked across my Google Browser.  They are accessable quickly and a good reminder of what places I can search.
  My other bookmarked sites are kept in Evernote. As I find sites that I want to use again, I add it to my list. They are categorized by topic such as Geographic Area, Type of Record, Surname, etc. Part of my Do-Over this week was to go through and make sure the links still worked and that I had each link in the correct topic.  Having a Research Toolbox has been a real asset to my research. It's a fantastic resource and time saver. There is no way I could remember all the various places where information can be found. Often I will go back and look at the list and see a link that I had forgotten about. If you haven't taken the time to put together a Research Toolbox, I would highly recomend it. 

Citing Sources

   For the most part, my sources are cited using the source template in Legacy Family Tree-that is the sources that I cited after the source template was introduced. The earlier ones, well all I can say is I tried. These older ones need to be corrected using proper source citation practices. For some reason, I thought "Personal Knowledge"....that was all....was a proper source citation or there's also those that just say something like, "1920 SC census". 
 Studing Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills has helped me to understand why the templates are set up the way they are and to be able to tweak them if I am trying to cite a source that is not available in the template.
   This has also helped when I am at a research facility. By learning a basic pattern of citing sources, I can now add a somewhat decent citation to my notes. My old notes left out some of the information that I needed and would result in having to look up a source again and rewrite the information.
     So, as I go through each family, making sure each piece of information is sourced, and sourced correctly is part of my plan. It may take a while but hopefully, I have learned from past mistakes and not repeat them as I add to my family tree.

How is your Do-Over going? I would love to hear from you.
Thanks so much for stopping by!

Extreme Makeover-Source Citation Edition

                                                   

One of my goals this year is to complete the NGS Home Study Class. The first assignment- send in a sourced Family Group Sheet. “No prob!” was my first reaction. After all I have been filling these out for years and I thought all I had to do was pick a family and hit print. Boy was I wrong!!

 For this assignment I decided to choose the William A. McManus family of Sumter, SC since I had recently been working on this line. I figured I could complete the homework for the class and research my family at the same time.

 When I printed out the Family Group sheet I noticed that my sources, especially those that I had added as long as 15 years ago, were not very good. They were put into my data base long before I understood the importance of documentation and before the source templates were added to my genealogy program. It’s not that they weren't sourced, it s just that several were not complete. I needed an “Extreme Source Citation Makeover”  -does Ty do genealogy?!?

Ty Pennington- Picture Courtesy Wikipedia

   I pulled out my handy copy of Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills and went to work. I checked each piece of information for all of William McManus’ family members. From Census Records, Directories, Cemeteries and Family Bibles I double checked and made sure each was cited in a way that would help anyone, including me, find the record again if needed.   

 Now, a week later I feel that I have a well sourced Family Group Sheet. My first assignment is ready to turn in! 

Did I learn anything from this experience?  A lot! Not only did I get a crash course in citing sources, but I saw how far I have come from those early days of just adding to my data base whatever I found on my ancestors. Today I try to analyze each piece of information and cite sources as correctly as I can.  With the help of technology it is now so much easier to do.

 I am sure there are still sources recorded in my data base that need an “Extreme Makeover”.I will work on them one family at a time.

 As for my William McManus family, there's one more thing to say - “Welcome Home Source Citations, Welcome Home!”