Token picture of Frank Deller
I’m really digging the updated FamilySearch Pilot. It’s got a few quirks, such as the mouse wheel and tab key not always behaving like you might expect, but … who cares. It’s FREE and more and more stuff keeps getting added.
If you haven’t used it yet, imagine Ancestry.com but without 800 ads for “Who do you think you are?”
Utah Death Certificates are just one of the sources I’m getting a lot of mileage out of this week.
Nothing is more annoying than fixing a few hundred source locations, because a few hundred different people abbreviated things differently. There is a solution though. When it comes to the name of a location, NEVER abbreviate. Inside the United States, the format of a location should be:
[city], [county], [state], [country]
Unless the word City or County appears as part of the official name, those facts should be ommited. Some examples:
Longmont, Boulder, Colorado, United States
Irvine, Orange, California, United States
Las Vegas, Clark, Nevada, United States
Please don’t abbreviate any part of the location. If you know the full details, you may omit a portion, as in this Suffolk County example:
Suffolk, New York, United States
New York City is kind of a zany example. The city is made up of 5 boroughs and also multiple counties. New York county makes up the majority of Manhattan. Manhattan is the name of an island, and not actually a city.
New York City, New York, New York, United States (aka Manhattan)
New York City, Kings, New York, United States (aka Brooklyn)
New York City, Queens, New York, United States (aka Queens)
New York City, Bronx, New York, United States (aka The Bronx)
New York City, Richmond, New York, United States (aka Staten Island)
Now some terrible examples:
Dozington, Worcs., England
Drummond, Grnt, MT
Hubbardtown, , VT
Blech.
Like everyone before me, citations and sources weren’t something I was originally concerned about. I’ve learned my lesson now, about a dozen or so times. There are a variety of reasons to document your sources, but my favorite is so that YOU can reproduce it. A common story, that I’ve played out many many times …
I’ve got a great printout of a Passenger List. I can read the names on it. It’s a Great Grandparent and some of her kids. Wow! I forgot I even had this. I want to track down more records like this. How the heck did I find this one? What’s the microfilm number? Did I get it from a Family History Center or from the National Archives? Did I find it first on an index? When did I find it? Did I look thru that whole film and strikeout on other ancestors?
After several attempts, I’ve come up with the following strategy for tracking sources:
Here’s a closer look at one of my source templates in Reunion:
United States Census Citation
Fortunately they got this date right
“According to The Longmont Ledger, 9/8/1911 page 5 she died at the age of 33 at 105 Main Street-Longmont”.
I just saw that on Findagrave.com. Did she die on September 8th or August 9th? If you’re in the United States, it’s probably September. If you’re in Europe, it might be August. Either way, it’s a dumb way to write the date.
The really annoying bit is that I recovered the obit for that researcher, and my email stated, “8 Sep 1911″. Pfft.
Writing the date should be such a simple task and not open to interpretation. Unfortunately, many family historians manage to muck it up. There are two common issues you want to avoid:
a) Never write the month as a number
b) Never write the year with only two digits
The Good
04 Jul 1776
07 May 1942
The Bad and the Ugly
1/8/2001
8/1/2001
Jan 1, 08
You might as well be writing it as, “Either January or August the 8th or 1st”
