Guidance on sources
I am a ward FH consultant and received this request from a ward member which is over my head. Can anyone help? Ann is his wife and from Belgium. Our local consultants have no answer.
Ann has a relative that put together an eleven generation family history book with hundreds of names. I’m making entries into Ann’s line that haven’t been entered before. We know of the relative and know that he put a great deal of effort into the record he built, but he doesn’t include any sources in the document. He mentions in the preamble that he found records from municipal sources, and I have seen where he has left blanks where he couldn’t verify dates/places. Should I stop creating records until we can verify sources ourselves? I know the church has done a lot of indexing for Belgium. Where would be a good place to look for record sources? Many relatives were born in or around Merchtem, Flemish Brabant, Belgium for the last century. Does Familysearch have collections for European areas?
Best Answer
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@Steven A Jones, congratulations on being a Temple and Family History Consultant for your ward. Many genealogists would have the view that family history books that lack sources (and generally more that one), are of little more value than being a research guide. This is not meant to demean the work, effort, and love that went into the book -- it simply means that the next researcher to continue the family history will not have the confidence nor the ability to prove future additions to the family tree, even if the new research is carefully documented and sourced.
The problem is now, and will ever be, that whatever is done later would be built on an unverified, unsourced foundation (i.e., the 11 generations of of unsourced people, relationships, and events). So my recommendation would be to shore up the foundation by revisiting the work and adding ample sources, as may be possible, You'll want to use these sources to establish, test, and then prove the relationships, etc that have been stated. This will help you (and Ann) to avoid the problem of inadvertently jumping from one family Tree to another (which happens all too often).
With regard to the questions about Belgium records, perhaps a good place to start might be the FamilySearch Search Wiki page, Belgium Genealogy, which provides a link to Belgium Online Genealogy Links and a link, Ask the Community, to the community group, Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands.
There is also a wiki page for Flemish Brabant (Vlaams-Brabant), Belgium Genealogy.
I hope that this helps. I expect that you will get excellent responses from others, as well.
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Hola hermano @steven jones le invito a que pueda buscarlas fuentes por imagenes y resgistros es facil se hace de la siguiente forma:
entra en buscar, se le despliga un pequeño menu y primero tiene registros y luego imagenes se le abrira unas ventanas solo es rellenar los campos y buscar, gracias por todo lo que hace.
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