Website Genealogy Notes

Introduction

A "family tree" represents the personal relationship of parents to child branching back in time from an individual to direct ancestors, but also forward from each through their children to their children's children. Along the way marriages associate people from other families.

A family tree is deduced from documented evidence. Evidence includes family records, photographs, historical publications, official records, US Federal Censuses, and more. Such sources not only help establish the fact of the family relationships, but give hints as to the life and times of each person. Caution and circumspection are necessary in evaluating evidence. 

The only reality of genealogy is the relationship father + mother => child. There can be only one real family tree. All the relationships we work on are deductions from evidence, for example a document says John is the son of Jacob. The documents can be missing, incomplete, or erroneous, so the tree we document is an educated guess and may change with time as research continues. Formal evaluation is called the Genealogical Proof Standard and has not yet been done for this site, although some notes discuss the logic used and the problems found.

Source-Citation and Fact Conventions

Privacy:

• Data and notes on living persons require login.
• To protect private or living information in source citation text, a "^" at the beginning of a line blocks display of that line unless the viewer is logged in (TNG mod gts016).
• Valid birth days for living (no "Unknown" or "6 Dec") to avoid TNG software problems.
• No SSN, but address/phone OK because protected for living.
• Information on living children adopted or adopted out is not shown unless requested by that child.

General Standards:

• For each person, explicitly state the reasoning and reliability of the relationship and other facts (attempt Genealogical Proof Standard) in Notes.
• Everyone is documented by their birth name (maiden name for women; birth name for adopted).
• Aliases and name changes are documented separately using that name (especially a woman's married name if she adopts the husband's surname).
• Serious name difficulties or variations are documented as a separate name (not just spelling or typos).
• For unknown family or surnames names use the form FamilyLastFirstRelation, for example "FamilySmallIsaacWife1" or "FamilySmallJane". For unknown first names use "Unknown".
• Add an Unknown person if evidence gives that person's place of birth, family name, or other information.
• Places are named as city name, county name followed by "County", State or country name. If detail follow in parentheses (address, location name, ..).
• Put clues for further work in Notes.

Full text content for each citation:

• Each citation should contain all text with family related data. The data itself should be an exact transcription or explain the problem. Pro forma wordage need not be quoted in full.
• A single source should be a single citation, for example all of the Census lines for a family should be one citation. This preserves the implied relationships between the persons.
• Cut and paste from on-line or computer sources - save time, do not revise.
• For image documents, put the image and a text transcription in the data area of the web site.
• For deceased persons, use "Unknown" for birth or death if actual dates not known. Do not use partials such as "6 Dec" (TNG does not recognize such as a date).
• Line breaks in citations will show as line breaks in the TNG display, FTM 2010 now puts them in the GEDCOM text correctly.
• Notes on citations currently show only the note number, e.g. "N134". It is unknown if this is a TNG property or a side effect of FTM creation of the GEDCOM.

For Census citations:

• Transcribe from the image. Do not use existing transcriptions. Note problems in square brackets. Add date of page from original.
• Include the entire family group in a single citation. If other family are neighbors, include those family groups also, even if on adjoining but separate pages.
• Prefix the Citation Detail with the family name, e.g. "(Adams)", to facilitate work.
• Couples in a Census are evidence supporting marriage even if not explicitly stated.

FTM Checks before Publication:

• Review GEDCOM for _FOOT references and fix (clear ref text and re-click "include citation text").
• Do not use any media/docu link feature of FTM until FTM properly exports media links.

Page modified: 25 Oct 2011 10:47:33 -0700