Source - Familysearch
Hi - I'm wondering how I find out what source a name/place/date came from when the last (or only) changes show that FamilySearch placed the information and there is no source listed.
Sources are a jumping-off point for me and help continue a search. Additionally, how do I verify if there is no source? I mean, I love you all at FS, but I want to verify :)
For example, I'd look at a name -" Jane Doe 00-0000. 1 Jan 2300. Moon City, Mars". And the only "source" says '30 May 2021 Name added FamilySearch,' and there is nothing to go to or click on.
Am I making sense? Let me know if there is clarification needed. Thanks for the forthcoming help!
Answers
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Family Tree is a compilation of every submission of genealogical data to FamilySearch since its founding in 1894. This information has gone through several prior databases of various sorts including the International Genealogical Index, the Pedigree Resource File, and the Ancestral File. Generally these databases did not include source information for the genealogical data submitted. An effort was made to incorporate a sourcing system in New Family Search which was Family Tree's immediate predecessor but it really did not work very well.
It was only with the opening of Family Tree in 2012 that we got a really good source system. A big part of our work as users now is to try to backtrack to where the information originally came from by finding original sources that confirm the information and attach those sources to the Family Tree entries. Fortunately the hinting system is a great help with this.
When you see FamilySearch as the contributor for information, this almost always means that there was no contributor name on the information in the older database or that there was a name but FamilySearch had no way to get permission to display that name in Family Tree. However, the import process creating Family Tree required that a user name be put on every piece of data. That spot could not be left blank. So they put in FamilySearch as a place holder. This import took place in 2012 so you nearly always see a date of 2012 on that information.
This does not mean there is no source for the information. Only that no source information was included in the old database.
Sometimes you can tell from the structure of an entry in Family Tree what type of source it came from and get a hint as to where to start looking.
Otherwise you just start with the assumption that someone, somewhere, at sometime had a good source. In your example, that means you know someone had access to birth records for Moon City. So you check for digitized records somewhere or you submit a request to the city's vital record department to find the source.
If you have an actual example of a record you are curious about, post the ID number and someone here may be able to tell you where that record came from and the first place to check for a source.
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I took a wild stab at finding a good example for you. Here is a record imported in 2012. It does have some ancient user names. Most of the time it will just say Family Search. There are some sources, but these were all added between 2015 and 2023 by people working on the Family Tree record. If you had come to it between 2012 and 2014 it would have looked exactly like this and not had a single source:
Those May 30, 2012 dates means that this is the original import into Family Tree. From the appearance and from other things on the person's profile it is apparent that this record came from the IGI and also from clues on the record it is apparent that this got into the IGI via the submission of a Family Group Record. There is a digitized collection of these on FamilySearch. Here is the original submission for this information which was sent into FamilySearch in 1958:
This paper record does have sources, but they were not put into the IGI and so not carried forward to any other database or Family Tree.
Here are the sources:
This would have been viewed as excellent source documentation in 1958. It fills almost the entire space on the form provided for sources.
It is also not very helpful in confirming the accuracy of the information. That is why it is usually better to just take the information on the record and use it to find where to start looking for your own sources.
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Continuing on from Gordon's points: it's much easier to find something if you know where to look, so even the unsourced legacy data found throughout the Family Tree can be valuable. It means that you know to look in Moon City, not on Venus.
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Gordon, Julia - Thank you both! I had no idea about the background and importing of the system. This is super helpful for me to understand how this all works. We forget that this has been going on for so long and that SO much is happening because we focus on our little piece of it. 🙂
This is the ID - KCSZ-88T. I'm good at picking things up once someone gives me a little direction. If I get a bit of an idea of where one starts and the (thought) process of how one gets to things, I'll probably be in good shape.
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Ouch. You picked an impossible one. I don't know if you can view temple information or not, but if you can, that is where you can see that all the information in KCSZ-88T came from a submission to FamilySearch in 1934.
The scanned Family Group Record Archive where you have at least a chance of seeing some sources like I showed above only covers 1942 to 1969.
You can find three records in the IGI that have same information using this search: https://www.familysearch.org/search/genealogies/results?q.birthLikeDate.from=1831&q.birthLikeDate.to=1831&q.birthLikePlace=of%20Waldaukadel%2C%20Ostpreussen%2C%20Prus.&q.birthLikePlace.exact=on&q.collectionId=5&q.givenName=louise&q.givenName.exact=on
There are microfilm record associated with these: 183549, 184210, 1239636 but checking the catalog shows that these are all just the temple records and are only available at the Salt Lake City library. They are very unlikely to have any additional information. There are three copies because her various temple ordinances were completed on three different dates, 17 February 1934, 10 May 1934, and 30 January 1935.
So all you can do is take her birth date of 5 Feb 1831, head off to Prussian records, and start searching for her and her other family members as listed. Keep in mind that in the old standard for recording place names as seen for her birth place, "of Waldaukadel, Ostpreussen, Prus.," "of" meant "known place of residence closest in time to the actual event."
In other words, her birth place as recorded actually means "I have no idea where she was really born but the first place I can find her family after she was born was in Waldaukadel." As a hypothetical example, the birth date may have come from a census record from 1890 when the family was living in Waldaukadel but the submitter was never able to actually find a birth record so only knew where they were living in 1890 (be clear I'm making this all up to make my point! I have no idea if there is even an 1890 census for Prussia!) and could never find where they were living in 1831.
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Occasionally, I'll come across a profile with "FamilySearch" and "2012" as the only info, and I will recognize it as a profile I created way back when. Generally it's a close family member whose profile I created in my early research.
And just this past week, I encountered a profile with the note that the profile in the tree was created based on an index/extract of a baptismal record.
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Unfortunately, I am more than familiar with the "here are the Prussian records that might be close and might not be close, and they might not even be in existence and ....well...GOOD LUCK!" method! HA! Looking thru those records tends to be eyeball-bending on a good day!
I was hoping that someone had actual knowledge of a record since the ordinance(s) had been done so long ago, even if it was just a family pedigree sheet, but I didn't know how to start looking.
You all are a great help. Thank you again!
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There are also some excellent free sites other than FamilySearch with Prussian records. One of my Irish great-aunts married the son of Prussian immigrants to the US, and I've traced Uncle Frank's family back to about 1830 in the Prussian records.
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