Sources and documentation

bonniesamuel1

I’m about to give up! I’m an experienced genealogy researcher and in fact, have taught research techniques including sources and proof standard. I spent time recently entering and documenting a family in the tree - went in today to add a new finding only to find additions ....some using "Ancestry tree" or "gedcom" or a 1830 census to verify children .... by name. WHY doesn’t FS give some guidance about documentation....what is and is not a valid source, even a way for users to indicate "possible" evidence. IF THE OBJECTIVE IS TO CREATE A WORLD TREE, ACCURACY IS IMPORTANT. I think many, many people would appreciate guidance and info regarding building a an accurate (as possible) family tree.

And a question about "documentation" entered by FamilySearch itself. For example, FS entered a source for the birthplace, date of one James Samuel (LZBT-JBQ) and in "details" section, lists a birthplace with a source cited, but no reason given as to the validity of the birthplace. It would seem that FS itself should be held to giving a reason for their entry or at least say, "this is a possible birth location."

Gordon Collett

Regarding your first comment, all I can say is I agree.

Regarding your second comment, if you see "FamilySearch" as the contributor, you will usually see a 2012 date. In these cases, this is information brought over from older databases. The contributors in those databases were not imported from those previous system and the programmers chose to use "FamilySearch" as a place holder rather than "Unknown" or "Known but not imported."

Rarely you will see post-2014 dates which others here have said occur when FamilySearch support has been requested to fix something and it took certain types of actions that then required some type of contributor name. I think these are mainly problems there was no way for the user requesting the help could fix.

In your example James Samuel, this is a special case that you are looking at backwards. FamilySearch did not attach that source to this James. The source was used to create a James. If you open the source, you will see a yellow explanatory bar that states that "This extracted IGI record was used to create this person." This means that the source, from the record extraction program that was the predecessor to indexing, came first and became part of the International Genealogical Index (IGI).

The IGI was one of the databases that was imported into Family Tree. The connection between the IGI and Family Tree was preserved, and in 2014, all the extracted record sources were attached to their corresponding Family Tree entry. The original Family Tree entry for James would have contained exactly what is in the source, nothing more, nothing less.

You can find that original entry by going to a deleted-by-merging James Samuel MFMN-JYL, ( https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/changelog/MFMN-JYL ) then going to his change log, and scrolling to the very bottom to see the original 2012 import. The last eight lines are the creation of that James Samuel with just his name, christening date and place, and parents names.

The next event in the change log was a merge on 18 January 2014 that started that James, the one the source refers to, on the long road to total obliteration as he was mixed in with what looks like, from my quick scan of the change log, half a dozen to a dozen different James Samuels. It looks to me that the person doing that initial merge did not notice that James Samuel was his first name. The extraction record does not include his last name of Morris.

I truly pity anyone trying to separate out all the different James Samuels in this record.

bonniesamuel1

Thank you, Gordon, for explaining the inclusion of "Family Search" as a contributor...it is a complicated path indeed. This sort of conundrum is an excellent example, as well, of the need for each contributor to state if his/her "source" is

__ possible __ supported evidence __original source or __ I wish it so!

Alas even an "original source" (right name, right place) may not be the right person, thus one needs to have supporting documentation.

A start for better accuracy and contributor's understanding, would be, within each details entry area, a sentence describing the origin of one's "source," i.e. original, primary....with link to FS explanation/ meaning of each.

As for James Samuel(s), yes, sometimes listed with surname Morris in contributors' addition, but I've never found it in original documents. However, there is a mistaken female child listed, Penelope Samuels LZBG-BFY, who I do not believe is a daughter of Sarah and James Samuel, but was either the wife or daughter of a Mr. Morris of Surry Co NC.... This needs further research and an analysis of same. Certainly, Penelope is not mentioned in James' will (see memories James Samuel).

Thank you again, Gordon.