Careless Transcriptions and Brick Walls Mary Emeline Brown Armstrong Ernst (1833-1910) was my great-great-great-grandmother. She appears on 101 users' trees on Ancestry.com, including mine. Of the 88 public trees on which she is listed, 24 also name her parents, and 20 of those give her parents' names as John Brown and Ruth Nelson, based on the parents' names recorded on Mary's death certificate. For years, those names and Mary's marriage place were all the information I had concerning her origins. Unfortunately, there was only one strong candidate for a possible father named John Brown in the county Mary came from, and no matter how I tried, I could not link him to a daughter named Mary or Emeline or even one close to the right age. Many other folks have gone ahead and linked this John Brown to Mary on their trees, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. There were no records of any kind naming a Ruth Nelson in that county either, nor any marriages between a

  Image from Wikitree.com "Wikitree, Where genealogists collaborate" Why do you want to use Wikitree? Short answer is that it will make you a better genealogist, because you will be demonstrating  all the parts of the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS). Each profile, ideally, will show your: 1. Reasonably exhaustive research. 2. Complete and accurate source citations. 3. Thorough analysis and correlation. 4. Resolution of conflicting evidence . 5. Soundly written conclusion based on the strongest evidence. 1 Wikitree is feature-rich - this is just a short introduction. See Wikitree.com for more information. There are excellent videos on youtube as well a new project: WikiTree Academy . There is even a Help page for Wikitree itself:  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:How_to_Use_WikiTree as well as a wonderful forum, G2G (Genealogist to Genealogist). Wikitree Profiles The heart of Wikitree are the Profiles. Each profile is a final resting place for your research, stories, ph

A timeline gets you where you want to go! We've discussed timelines many times here on the blog. Here is one 2-year-old example: The Timeline: Your Guide Through the Twists and Turns of Research . In the latest SKCGS Study Group, working our way through "Research Like A Pro," by Diana Elder, AG with Nicole Dyer. The second chapter is all about how to use a timeline to analyze sources and likely evidence found in those sources.   But how exactly do you create one? And is one way better than another? Elder advocates for a spreadsheet or relational database. While most of us have not yet tried Airtable , the relational database she uses now, I tried creating the spreadsheet from the information I had been collecting in a timeline using Google Sheets. While it was useful as a place to collect the direct links to record images and a good prompt to create source citations, I didn't find it useful to reason out what was happening behind the records.  Here is a snippet of tha

How to Get from Research to Proving Your Case   Making your proof argument a fun project! What do you do when you have finished a lot of research on one of your families? We all know what we're supposed to do -- write it up! Write It Up Devon Noel Lee from the Family History Fanatics in her series " Researching Over My Shoulder " has inspired me over the past couple of years to get better about this. When tackling a bit sticky family, I now generally start a new Google Sheet, and start roughing out a plan. As I work, I try to keep it updated with records found (and not found), other notes, and lately, adding citations as I go. Our Persons Of Interest group was an excellent impetus for that, because if you have written a detailed timeline for your person or family, it is much easier to have others look at your work and offer ideas and suggestions you have not yet considered. Of course not everything we write is a proof, but not every family is easy, and not every localit

Citations save you time and money If quality of research is of no interest, at least taking excellent notes of Who, What, When and Where (or as Tom Jones puts, it, Where In and Where At) about each source will save you endless time and money by preventing multiple identical searches of the same databases, books and repositories. And you will save money when you order the exact record you need, rather then the wrong one, to say nothing of saved travel and time costs! Bonus : We all get interrupted at times. Having complete and orderly notes will help us get back to work with far less fuss.  Quality Don't we all want to do the best quality research possible in the time we have to devote to our family history? If so, developing the habit of documenting your research in a timely and orderly way will save time, money and bother, and more important, give you the tools to do good analysis of what you've found.   In her classic Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts

Cleaning is work! Why bother? It's your tree, after all, and you can build it any way you want!  That's true, but most of us want to share our research with others and find cousins to collaborate with! And to do that successfully, we need to clear out duplicate people,  extraneous relationships (such as step-parents who didn't raise the children),  alternative facts (such as a vague "abt. 1882") when we have the precise date of birth, immigration, marriage, or death. Having accurate, clear facts and sources make it possible to tell the story of our ancestors better. And if you are working in an online genealogy site, a clean tree will allow their matching algorithms to get you the best hints to more sources, and more cousin  matches . Best Practices Be sure to list each woman with her birth surname; if you do not not know it, leave it blank. If you know only the married name, link her to a spouse with that surname and if you do not know his forename, lea