Brian at Mt. Elliott Cemetery in Detroit.

Mental overload!  Last Sunday I returned home from my whirlwind trip to Detroit with my mother and aunt to investigate our Blake roots, and my brain is full of new knowledge, leads and questions.

It was roughly a 6-hour drive to Detroit, so we left around 1:00 am, on what was technically Friday, although it felt like Thursday had barely finished.  This meant that we would have a few more passengers joining us for the trip – coffee and his cousins, iced latte and Red Bull.  We made great time on the drive, and by 8:00am we were in Detroit.

The first stop was Mt. Elliott Cemetery, where many of the Blake’s were buried.  We quickly found the section we knew them to be buried in, and we split up to search for the headstones.  After 10 minutes of searching with no luck, I started to worry that this may end up like my cemetery visit back in December to search for my Parotto ancestors.  Maybe my ancestors’ headstones were long since covered by grass, and we would not be able to find them unless we scraped the dirt and grass off every headstone.

Just as I was getting ready to check with the office again, I stumbled across Catherine Blake’s headstone.  On it, she was listed as “Mother of P. Blake”!  A wave of excitement rushed over me as I yelled to my mother and aunt to come take a look.  I continued walking down the row of graves, discovering more Blake headstones!  In total, we found about 15 headstones that consisted of Blake’s, and several “in-law” families.  We found my Third-great grandparents Patrick and Eliza, my Fourth-great grandmother Catherine, Eliza’s parents, Felix & Helen O’Rafferty, six of Patrick & Eliza’s children, and a few more.  They were all buried together in a small plot. We also found that in front of their family lot, they had a small concrete step that had P. Blake inscribed on it.  He must have reserved this large area back when he was on the Board of Trustees of Mt. Elliott Cemetery.  We paid our respects to our ancestors of long ago, and headed back to the car.

From the cemetery, we headed over to the Detroit Public Library to check out the Burton Historical Collection.  The Burton Historical Collection houses old church baptisms, marriage records, city directories, biographies, city histories and more, so we knew we would be spending quite a bit of time here.  Unfortunately, the parking meters only allowed two hours at a time, so that meant I would make a few trips back out to replenish the meter.  But on the positive side, I wasn’t able to get a run in this weekend, so my parking meter jaunts would at least be some type of exercise.

Once inside the library, we got our bearings on where everything was, and divided the responsibilities up.  I would search the old church records on microfilm, my mom would go through the Detroit history books, and my aunt would look through the city directories and other sources.  I was hoping to find a baptism record for my Great-great-grandfather Nelson Blake so I could finally solve the mystery of whether he was Patrick’s son, or Patrick’s grandson (mentioned in a prior post).

Unfortunately I did not find any baptism record for him, so that mystery remains unsolved.  However, it did raise a few new questions for me.  Was Nelson born to Patrick’s eldest son Harry and his wife Nellie before they were married, and so the church wouldn’t baptize him? This would support the idea that Harry and Nellie had to give him to Patrick to raise.  Or another option is that perhaps Nelson was not born in Detroit? Maybe he was born in another city of Michigan, or possibly even Canada. While I was very disappointed I didn’t solve the mystery that I hoped would finally be solved, I was happy with the other information we found.  We narrowed down Patrick’s relocation from Canada to Detroit to within a few years.  We found some old articles on Patrick in a local genealogy society’s newsletters, and we also found quite a few obituaries on the Blakes.

Around 2:30 pm, we still had plenty of resources to search through, but we decided to head over to Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada, to see if we could find any proof of where the Blakes actually stayed.  We made it just in time before the Marsh Collection closed.  This collection houses information on the local history of Amherstburg.  Since I had called a few weeks earlier, the lady who was working had a folder set up for us with the information specific to our group.  We found many old articles on the Rosebank Farm, and best of all, we viewed a 1901 Amherstburg tax collections roll.  On this file was none other than Patrick Blake!  So he did, in fact, own a summer home here.

Truthfully, I don’t even know all that I’ve gathered so far because we found so much. I’m so excited to go through it all and see what new facts, clues, etc. we can gather.  Hopefully next week I will have sorted through the mess.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Family Tree Firsts is an ongoing blog series featuring newbie genealogist Brian Parotto of Hampshire, Ill.

Here are some of the tools Brian is using to launch his genealogy education. Check them out:

• Canadian Immigration Records video class
• City Guide: Detroit
• US Vital Records independent study course

The post From Detroit to Canada: A Genealogy Whirlwind appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

The How to Research Genealogy Records workshop features eight video classes, including encore presentations of some of our best sessions from Family Tree University Virtual Conferences. If you’ve attended one of our past Virtual Conferences, this event is a great way to catch up on great classes you missed—plus get involved with the discussions happening over the course of the week.

Video Sessions

3 Cool Tools to Help With Your Newspaper Research
Host: Lisa Louise Cooke
You know that newspapers can reveal fascinating facts and details about your family, but how do you actually find those nuggets? This class gives you the scoop on tools that help you search papers of the past.

Finding Land Records Online
Host: Diana Crisman Smith
Ahoy ye web-lubbers: Lay anchor on the Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office website to search a wealth of federal land patents. If your ancestor purchased a plot from the US government, this class will teach you tricks to locating your kin’s digitized land record.

City Directories: Key to Your Family’s Past
Host: Maureen A. Taylor
Unlock answers about your ancestors! This class shows how you can track your family year by year, explore their neighborhood and use the clues you find in city directories as a springboard to other genealogical sources.

Getting Creative with Death Records
Host: Diana Crisman Smith
When working with death records, many researchers stop at obituaries and death certificates. When those can’t be found or don’t provide enough information, where else can you look? Discover how using other records can help fill in the gaps.

Making Sense of Pre-1850 Censuses
Host: Maureen A. Taylor
Don’t get tripped up by tick marks—this class will teach you techniques to tease useful clues from the early US censuses where all residents names weren’t recorded.

Using Guardianship Records in Genealogical Research
Host: Marian Pierre-Louis
Answers about your brick wall ancestors may be hiding in guardianship records, generated in court cases involving orphaned children, inheritances, adoptions and other circumstances. Discover how tracking down these court records can pay off for your research.

Using Naturalization Records
Host: Lisa A. Alzo
Follow your ancestors’ path to citizenship toward new ancestral discoveries. This class walks you through how and where to find naturalizations, and how to use the records as a springboard to your ancestors’ life in the old country.

Using Criminal Court Records
Host: Judy Russell
The bountiful paper trail of a criminal court case can be a key resource in your genealogy research, whether your ancestor was a witness or felon, police officer or judge. Bail bonds—which guaranteed the appearance of an individual in court—could even provide the only proof that your ancestor was living in a specific area. The Legal Genealogist blogger Judy Russell will lay out essential strategies for Using Criminal Court Records. This webinar comes with a free PDF download: a copy of Family Tree Magazine’s guide to courthouse records.

The post One-Week Workshop: How to Research Genealogy Records appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

• where records were created and stored
• migration paths
• locations selected for settlement
• division of farms and property in probate

And because land doesn’t move, it’s one of the few elements of our ancestors’ lives that we can always count on. Consider an old photograph. The depicted buildings may have changed, but the surrounding landmarks, such as hills, valleys and rock formations, should still exist today and can aid in identification.

Although there are geographically oriented computer applications geared toward genealogists, one of the most powerful tools can be found outside the genealogy community.

Google Earth is a powerful mapping and viewing program available for free download at http://earth.google.com. Here is an overview of a few of its coolest features:

Locating Ancestral Homes and Locations

For most researchers, it just isn’t financially feasible to travel to all of the locations where one’s ancestors lived. The good news is that Google Earth can provide you with a virtual experience that is as close to being there as your computer can take you.

Get a Closer Look

While it is certainly interesting to locate an ancestor’s home on the globe, you can’t see much detail from the virtual sky looking down over the area. To get an up-close-and-personal look at a location, you can employ Google Earth’s Street View function.

Street View offers you a panoramic view from various positions on the street. Launched in May 2007, Street View was available for only a few major US cities. Today, Google offers images of nearly every street in America, and its coverage is spreading quickly around the world.

Just how does Google do it? A fleet of cars equipped with nine directional cameras drive up and down each street and snap photographs from all directions every few seconds. When faced with narrow streets, such as those in Rome, similarly equipped Google Trikes (tricycles) make the journey.

Get your bearings

Getting your directional bearings can be difficult once you’re in Street View. To locate an address, you can hover your mouse over the camera icons that appear along the street. If unsure which particular house is your ancestor’s, look for addresses on buildings as well as on the curb. To get a closer lookat a particular area, double-click on the spot on the image, and Google Earth will slowly zoom in.

Find your ancestors on Google Earth

Most of us never get to travel to all the places our ancestors lived, but you can follow in their footsteps—virtually. Google Earth, a free software program, lets you experience faraway locations from the comfort of your own home. In Google Earth for Genealogists, you’ll tap into the program’s robust features to bring depth and a new perspective to your family history research.

The post 3 Reasons to Map Your Ancestor’s Hometown appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

You can find all this by planting your family tree online to share with others. There are a surprising number of places to plant, grow and maintain an online tree. And in most cases, it’s free. Used with care, online trees can be the key to uncovering generations of family members. Here are a few of our favorites:

1. Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com>

You probably recognize this huge site as a resource of genealogical records, but you also can build a free family tree here, upload photos and digitized records, and make it public or private. Private trees are still searchable, but the searcher must contact the tree owner through Ancestry.com for permission to view the tree. Unless you specify otherwise, anyone without a death date is designated as “living” and gets a private profile. 

You can upload a GEDCOM (the universal file format for family tree files) from your genealogy software, or enter one ancestor at a time. To add a source citation, click on an event (such as Birth) on a person’s timeline, then scroll down and click Add a New Source Citation. “Shaky leaf” hints on a person’s profile indicate possible matches in other trees or in Ancestry.com records, but to see full details for most hints, you must subscribe to Ancestry.com. You can sync your online tree with Ancestry.com’s Family Tree Maker 2012 software and use the Ancestry mobile app to access your tree on the go.

2. FamilySearch Family Tree <www.familysearch.org>

Formerly open to only members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and select others, this free family tree-building site is now available to everyone. The site offers a manual option for entering your data. For now GEDCOMs can’t be uploaded directly to the tree—that’s done under the Genealogies link on the homepage. But the handy Family Tree Reference Manual (Click Help or View Training) says GEDCOM uploading enhancements are planned.

FamilySearch’s goal is to build one family tree and avoid duplicate people, so when you add a person, Family Tree automatically searches to see if he or she is already on the site. If it finds matches, you can choose one or add a new person. Once you’ve added someone, you can’t delete him, but you can change certain details. Family Tree users can edit details about anyone in the tree, but they’re supposed to provide sources.

3. Findmypast <www.findmypast.com> and findmypast UK <www.findmypast.co.uk>

Sister sites findmypast and findmypast UK offer similar versions of the same tree-building software, but the trees on the two sites aren’t integrated. Both sites offer free treebuilding with an easy-to-use interface. Expected upgrades include uploading GEDCOMs, pictures and other media. Findmypast UK, geared to British researchers, offers a few more options, including the ability to print reports.

All trees are private, viewable only by your invitation. If your goal is simply to have your tree online for editing and select sharing, either site will do. Findmypast plans to make trees searchable, although users will be able to opt out beforehand.

4. Geni <www.geni.com>

Like many of the sites here, Geni (owned by MyHeritage) offers free memberships and paid subscriptions. If you plan to search other trees, you’ll need to subscribe. If you’re just looking for a site to build your tree, Geni’s free version offers a robust platform.

You can add unlimited people to a free tree, as well as up to 1GB of media using the site’s intuitive interface for uploading pictures and documents. Other nifty features include the

automatic creation of a timeline for a person in your tree, and easy creation of source citations. In exchange for all the functionality, you’ll have to enter your tree manually—there’s no GEDCOM upload option.

Subscribing to Geni’s Standard ($5 per month) or Pro ($7.95 per month) plan lets you search the site’s 100 million profiles, receive automatic notifications of matches with others’ trees, and increase your digital media storage space.

5. WikiTree <www.wikitree.com>

As you may have deduced from the name, WikiTree also is a wiki-based, collaborative platform

designed to create a single, worldwide family tree. WikiTree is free, but contributors must agree to an honor code that emphasizes accuracy and common courtesy.

You can enter you tree manually, which may be a good option for beginners. Submitting a GEDCOM involves a multistep review process if you have a lot of names in your file, and may require some tweaking to get one imported. Even if you don’t plan to have a GEDCOM imported, though, uploading it and reviewing the provided match report is an easy way to find out if someone else is working on the same families. You can create pages for individual ancestors including photos, a bio and most importantly, sources. Many features in WikiTree may take some time to figure out, but like all the sites on this list, the more time you put into using them, the more you’ll get out of them.

Discover family trees online

Technology today puts the family tree at your fingertips–whether at home, in the library, or anywhere else you have access via smartphone or tablet. But convenience is only one reason to explore online family trees. They are a great way to organize, share and report your research. Searching the trees of others who may be working on your brick-wall ancestors can show you the way to bust down that brick wall, as well as open up new avenues of research.

What You’ll Learn:

The post 5 Top Websites for Searchable Family Trees appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

But this isn’t perfect for all situations. When you drive a car down an alley and you come to a dead end, what do you do? Throw the car into reverse, of course.

The same is true when you hit a research dead end–a brick wall. You need to throw your research strategy into reverse and find an alternative route to get to where you want to go. For instance, after you’ve harvested the low-hanging genealogical fruit, consider tracking down relatives who might possess ancestral information and heirlooms that will take your search further.

How do you pick up a relative’s trail? Let’s review the most helpful strategies for tracking down a long-lost cousin or unknown relative.

1. Write down everything you remember or know about the person. 

Start your three binder and using the worksheets provided with this class, write down what you know. Then keep careful notes along the process. This will keep you focused and help prevent time-wasting duplication of effort. 

2. Look for for people hidden in plain sight. Check telephone directories — is your target listed? Try calling information (411). Remember that the information in both printed and online phone directories is, on average, anywhere from one to eighteen months old. 

3. Run basic online searches. Private investigators run an average of five searches with five different search engines for each person they’re looking for. 

4. Check social networking websites. Search on the persons name in at the major social networking sites. Post your family tree and search others’ family trees to try to make connections. 

5. Try sending mail to an old address. The post office or the current occupant might forward the letter for you. Or the post office might send it back to you with a corrected address. 

6. Try contacting the local churches in the person’s hometown (if known). 

The church office might know of relatives to forward the request to. Churches often will allow you to place an inquiry in the parish newsletter, too. 

7. Look for licenses. 

Does your relative practice a profession that requires a license? This includes doctors, attorneys, private investigators — the list goes on. Check state-level public records databases for an address you relative would’ve had to register to obtain or renew his license. 

8. Check campaign contributions. 

By law, these records are public, and you can look them up in several online databases described in the next section. 

The big difference from traditional genealogy is that you’re dealing with modern records and stricter privacy laws and guidelines. But don’t let this deter you. People who at one time seemed to vanish from the face of the earth are located every day.

Beat your brick walls

In this course, you’ll a huge number of secrets to busting through the brick walls that keep you from furthering your genealogical research. If you have ancestors who seem to have beamed down from outer space, this course is for you!

The post 8 Tricks to Locate Long-Lost Relatives appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

What makes a marriage record such a juicy genealogical carrot on a stick? Depending on the time and place, you may not only learn a spouse’s identity, but both spouses’ birth dates and places, parents’ names and birth information, prior marital status, occupations, citizenship status and more.

Marriage records kept by the government have taken different formats over time in the United States, like:

• Consent to marry affadavits. Where a bride or groom was underage, the signature of a parent or guardian was required for the wedding to take place. These documents may appear alongside other documents. In addition to being interesting, consent documents can also help identify parents and even whether a father was deceased (he usually signed if he was living).
• A marriage bond, or financial pledge, was posted by the groom and/or father/brother of the bride just before a wedding. The purpose was to offset any legal expenses if the marriage were nullified. A bond could be required along with a marriage license or in lieu of it. There may or may not be follow-up information confirming that the marriage took place. Bonds were especially common in the early South.
• Intentions. More common in New England, this practice involved the bride and groom registering their intention to wed at the town hall or courthouse prior to the event.
• License applications, licenses and returns. These are the most common record type you’ll encounter. The couple filled out an application that remained on file at the county office and was issued a license. The license was surrendered to the officiator and returned to the county along with the officiator’s signature certifying that the wedding took place. This last bit is known as the “return” and may be on the actual license or in a county register book: see more on that below. Applications and returns are what you’ll find in most county records today. They often provide a lot of genealogical information about both parties and their parents, as the example shown on the previous page.
• Registers. These are log books that record weddings that occurred in that jurisdiction, often chronologically, as in the example below. They may also be roughly indexed by the first letter of the bride or groom’s surname. A separate index to bride and groom’s names may exist. 

Master court records

Let’s be honest—court records can be intimidating. From complex legal jargon to busy bustling clerks and inconsistent record sets from county to county, the courthouse is not always the most welcome research venue. In this four-week course, you’ll learn to become comfortable in the county courthouse and find what might be the only trace of your ancestors.

What You’ll Learn:

The post 5 Marriage Records to Look For appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

Whether your English ancestors arrived in colonial times or much later, there’s never been a better time to explore those roots. Here are some of the best sites for English research. You’ll note that many of these sites require a subscription fee or payment for access to actual records (indicated by a $).

Here are some key sites for your English research:

1. FamilySearch <www.familysearch.org>: We’ll mention this site from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) again when we discuss the resources available at the Family History Library (FHL) and your local Family History Center. But it’s worth a visit beyond its online FHL catalog and extremely useful help files. Among important English resources here are the International Genealogical Index <familysearch.org/search/collection/igi>, covering Vital and church records from the early 1500s to 1885, many from England; censuses for England and Wales for the years 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911; 69 million records of England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975; and 15 million records of England Deaths and Burials, 1538-1991. FamilySearch has also embarked on an ambitious program of digitizing and indexing other records, notably parish records that are listed by county. Even if you didn’t find your ancestors here before, it’s worth checking back frequently to search newly added records.
2. Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com> $: In addition to all English censuses, Ancestry’s extensive offerings include birth, marriage and death indexes from 1916 on, immigration and military records, and the National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1966. Note that some of its databases are free to access, including the 1881 census and the indexes from the FreeBMD site (see below).
3. Find My Past <www.findmypast.com> $: Probably the most extensive site focusing on UK genealogy, Find My Past offers parish records dating from 1538, more than 24 million passenger lists, vital record indexes from 1837 to 2006, and the complete UK census collection (1841 to 1911).
4. FreeBMD <freebmd.rootsweb.com>: More than 214 million transcribed UK Civil Registration records of births, marriages and deaths from 1837 to 1983 can be searched for free at this tireless volunteer site. Sibling sites serve up equally free UK censuses <www.freecen.org.uk> (almost 21 million) and parish records <www.freereg.org.uk> (more than 19 million marriages, baptisms and burials).
5. National Archives–UK <www.nationalarchives.gov.uk>: Search for records about your British ancestors in the archives’ catalog of 11 million government documents including those of criminal trials, medieval taxes and family history. If you can’t find answers at the main archives, the Access to Archives search <www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2> lets you comb more than 400 other record offices and repositories.
6. GENUKI <www.genuki.org.uk>: Everything you need to know about GENealogy in the UK and Ireland can be found under this umbrella site: church history, heraldry, land records, manors, occupations, poorhouses, tax records, even how to decipher your ancestors’ handwriting.
7. Origins Network <www.origins.net> $: This British Isles subscription site  specializes in unusual, hard-to-find, older records, including 500 years of will indexes.
8. Historical Directories <www.historicaldirectories.org/hd/index.asp>: This recently site from the University of Leicester is a digital library of local and trade directories for England and Wales, from 1750 to 1919. You can find the directory you want by location, decade or keyword.
9. Archives.com <www.archives.com> $: Databases include UK census and vital-records images.

10. World Vital Records <www.worldvitalrecords.com> $: Here you’ll find 116 million names from UK censuses and vital records.

Find your Anglo ancestors

Today, an estimated 25 million Americans can claim English ancestry. We think of English arrivals in America as dating to the Mayflower and Jamestown, and it’s true that England supplied a majority of the colonial population. But even into the first half of the 19th century, English immigrants trailed only Germans and Irish in the US. Learn the ins and outs of English records, both in the US and England, and trace your roots back to Britain in this new 4-week course.

What You’ll Learn:

The post 10 Best English Genealogy Websites appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

Not finding your ancestor in genealogical records? The name you’ve been searching for may be wrong. Your ancestor may have changed his surname after immigration, or English-speaking clerks may have translated it. In colonial America, Bentz evolved to Pentz and eventually Pence; Zimmermann became Zimmerman or was translated to Carpenter; and Schwarzwälder became Blackwelder. As many as a hundred names could be derived from a single German surname. Here are some hot tips for fighting through German name changes and translations.

1. Watch for regional customs. If you have ancestors from northern Germany around Ostfriesland, you may find a pattern of changing last names. This area used patronymics—surnames taken from the father’s given name. For example, Peter Hansen’s offspring would have the last name Petersen. Ancestors from around Westphalia may have based their surname on farm ownership. A telltale sign is when a man’s surname changed at marriage—his wife was heir to a farm.

2. If an immigrant’s name is different in US records than in those of his homeland, the change happened after he immigrated. Ellis Island officials didn’t write names, they merely checked the passenger list that was created at the port of departure. Rather, your ancestor may have adopted an American-sounding name as a way to identify with his new home and avoid anti-German sentiments.

3. Don’t use census records alone to conclude an ancestor changed the spelling of his or her name. People didn’t write their own names on censuses. They (or a family member, or even a neighbor) stated their names to the census enumerator, who wrote them down. One census enumerator may write Müller, another Mueller and another Miller. Even within the same document, such as a will, you might find a name spelled different ways. Note all name variations you find and don’t limit your research to the most common spelling.

4. North Americans typically use our first names. Looking at the name Johann Peter Schneider, we’d see Peter as just a middle name. But in Germany, people were often given saints’ names (common ones were Johann, Maria and Anna) as first names and were called by their middle names. Your safest bet is to look for both Johann and Peter in records.

Dig into German records

Whether it’s from difficult translation or hard-to-read fonts, we can all agree that trying to decode German records is a pain in the posterior. Gothic typeface and crazy cursive handwriting can lead to hours of squinty suffering. Let James M. Beidler put salve on your wounded research with this hour-long on-demand webinar. He covers:

• How to arm yourself with resources to build vocabulary and decipher abbreviations.

• A methodology for solving the quirks of the printed Gothic/Fraktur typeface in which books, forms, gazetteers and newspapers are found through the mid-20th century.

• Getting started transcribing and translating the handwritten German cursive script in which most church and civil records are found.

• And much more!

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to find the Germans in your family line!

Sign up today. 

The post 4 Tips for Finding German Ancestors appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

• To keep track of what we’re doing
• To evaluate what we’ve found
• To ‘prove’ our findings to others
• To provide a trail for others to follow or build upon
• To discuss with those who disagree
• To avoid plagiarism and give credit where due
• Because sources are interesting artifacts

Here are some of Sunny’s keys to putting together solid citations:

1. The citation itself is just one step. To confirm the factuality and authenticity of your data, you must first properly evaluate the source of your information. Questions to ask include:

• What type of record is it?
• Can you tell who created it and who reported the information therein? What credentials, biases, limitations or weaknesses might that person or agency have had?
• Is it complete–are parts missing or illegible?
• Is it an original record, a true copy, a transcript, translation or abstract?
• If a copy, do you have access to the original at least long enough to compare them? Any difference?
• Was the record created at the same time as the information was recorded?
• Do the front, end and other descriptive matter give more clues about the creation of this record?

2. Link the source information to the data itself. This is the best way to stay organized, and prevent you from having to double-back later or go hunting for records you’ve already found.Options for doing this include photocopying the title page and the publication information from a book and stapling it to the photocopied records. Be sure to copy the full title, all authors, the edition (if applicable), publisher, city, state and publication date. Alternatively, you could write this information in the margins of the photocopied records. Both are good options for when you are working in the library, copying pages from books. If you’re working paperlessly online or with your own database on your computer, then you can insert citation information in your database or online family tree, or you can record it in bibliographic software such as Endnote, RefWorks or Zotero.

3. Good source citations can provide further clues about your ancestors. Sometimes you have to compare data gathered in different places, or sometimes the clues are in the data themselves. Sometimes the information fits with what you already know, and sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes the clues are in the sources. Here are some important questions to ask that can assist in your data analysis:

• Which sources were created closest to the time of the event?
• Which sources report firsthand knowledge of the event?
• What biases might these sources have had?
• Did you consult an original source, a copy or a derivative?
• Was the source complete, or were parts missing that might have altered your understanding of the content?
• Do you trust the provenance or authenticity of the source?

Watch the whole video here.

The post 3 Tips for Solid Source Citations appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.