What sources to attach (or not attach) to a person's record/profile
Do protocols exist for attaching a source to someone's record/profile? For example, when I look at the items in "Research Help" for a parent, there are birth registers for their CHILDREN. Sure, the birth register contains the parent's name, but should it be attached to the parent's record? I feel it should only be attached to the child's record, to avoid cluttering up the parent's.
I know you can attach a source and then uncheck the "Tag Sources" checkbox to sort of hide it, but maybe the source shouldn't be attached in the first place.
Surely this has been discussed before, but if so I can't find it. Thank you for any insights.
Answers
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I attach any record that refers to that person in any capacity. If they are on a document, it needs to be in their sources. Having parents and a child all attached to the same source proves the relationship. Think of it as if you were prepping a legal case for court. You want to have as much evidence as you can that proves your theory, and you want to have an answer (rebuttal) for anything that could possibly disprove it.
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Yes, linking the family together, by way of records that mention several members of the same family, is a prime way to prove you are documenting the correct family.
I think of it as a giant connect-the-dots puzzle. Every dot is a person, and every connection helps to prove the family unit. If a family member is a godparent or baptismal sponsor, they get connected, too.
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The other reason for attaching sources is so that when people are starting out in the historical records, they can see that a certain record is already attached to person in Family Tree. Here, for example, are some sources that are for the father in a birth record:
Three of these are attached to people in Family Tree as indicated by the small pedigree icon. One is not. If someone is doing a parent search in the records, he can jump right to the Family Tree person, see if it is correctly attached, and see all the research that has previously been done on the family. This could potentially save hours of time and prevent the creation of duplicate people in Family Tree.
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WmAlken I agree with all comments provided. When a single source connects a group of people for an instant in time and at a specific place, it often helps immensely to see that, even if some of the people are not immediately obvious as family. Sometimes that extra information about an "interloper" in the source could lead to additional information about the primary ancestor in question. Sometimes they turn out to be family after all. If you have brick walls with certain ancestors, a recommended approach is to begin detailed research on siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, all in-laws and any others associated with your mystery person. You put your private eye hat on. For non-relatives or distant relatives in any source, they should also be thoroughly researched and attached in the New Person option for "Other Relationship".
Making it a practice to thoroughly attach a source to all people mentioned is a fantastic habit to have. Brick walls can come tumbling down with such an abundance of evidence.
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For a long time I shared your view. My argument also involved the clutter caused in the Sources section - particularly when there are, say, ten children (mentioning the parent in the record) and each has multiple christening records available (due to multiple indexing of the same event). It often takes me ages to place these records in order - I like them at the bottom (in date order), following those "directly" relating to the ID in question (their own vitals, etc.).
However, I do now often find it useful to have all these sources attached to the parent(s), in spite of my old argument that it was easy to make the parent-child connections, just by looking at the sources for the children - positioned directly below them on the person page.
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