Genealogy for Beginners: Documentation

The number one task in all your genealogy research is to document all you find. This serves two purposes.

1. It allows others to judge and evaluate your evidence.

2. It keeps you from repeating yourself years down the road.

An example: Mother found an old book of biographies from a small town in Kansas. It had engravings of the town’s founding fathers. One of them had her maiden name, and the engraving looked a lot like her grandfather. But this was early in her researches and she wasn’t sure. So she photocopied the article and picture. A few years later she found census and birth certificate evidence that she had indeed found her grandfather’s father in that book! But, she had neglected to photocopy the title page of the book, and had to search through several libraries to find it again in order to document it as a source.

A lot of time and effort would have been saved had she documented the source from the beginning.

An extensive discussion of documentation can be found in my book, Genealogy Online 8th Edition. It makes a great Father’s Day present!

Till next week,

Libbi

Posted by elizabeth in Family trees, Genealogy, General | Trackback |