Confused about Ancestry 'sources' - Can you help?

Question

Hi there

In looking at my great-grandfather's profile, I see someone including 3 sources from Ancestry.com.  These are a Census, Marriage, and Passenger List.

Trouble is, I cannot access any of them.  Am I doing something wrong?  I click the links, and Ancestry wants me to buy a membership.  I don't want to.

What use is a 'source' that nobody can actually view?  Yes, someone proved the info, but still...    Yes, I can see the Source Citation, but I want to know more.  The link only takes me to a page which is much to small to even read.

Please advise if I'm just doing something wrong, because nobody should have to buy a membership somewhere, just to see what WikiTree claims as fact.  I do not dispute the info at all, I just want to see it.

Thanks!

Brenda

Comments

Hi Brenda. See

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Sources_Style_Guide#Commercial_Web_Sites_as_Sources

The WikiTree guideline of extracting information seems to have been followed reasonably well for these three sources. You can see higher resolution versions of the Ancestry Sharing Links using the method described at

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1521802/ancestry-sharing-links-again

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Brenda, in the citation, note the link that says "Sharing Link". Clicking on that (especially if you use your browser's option to open in a new window) will display that image.

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I somewhat agree with you, just adding a link is not enough.

I work off-line and as a practice keep a text copy of important citations in my database (not the image). When I upload the profile to WT, GEDCompare creates these as Notes in the profile. They actually give much more info than the practice of writing it into a story. I thought I was the only one doing this, but just the other day came across another user also doing this.

The advantage is that you seldom need to follow a link to see all the information.  I too have tried to follow links that blocked me due to a requirement to register. One exception, I don't keep a copy of Census records. My reason is I only use Census records to track the location of the person and to verify the people in the family unit.

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Thank you, Jim

That post helped me to expand the image.

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Do remember that many of the most valuable genealogical sources are not freely available on the public internet. We can and should cite sources like old documents found in an archive, published books that are copyright-protected, and records posted online on subscription websites. When doing so, it is particularly important to fully document the contents of the record and provide good citations that would help another person find the item.

Answer 1

Another source

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/260799178/stephen-henley

Answer 2

The problem is that sometimes the only sources or the best sources can be behind a "Pay Wall". If you look at the sources on his FamilySearch profile of https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G8KK-S7Q it has the 1861 census as well but you can't see the image there either without paying FindMyPast for the chance to confirm the transcription is correct. There are also several other sources that you could add if you believe they are accurate.

The information on the Ancestry sources should give you enough information to find other sources potentially on free sites or other pay sites. 

Comments

I agree. There are no images of UK censuses available on free to view sites, these provide partial transcripts of the info.  You never know how accurate the FS transcription is nor what is left out (it varies by census)  Obviously the same can be said for any transcript.

So on the 1861 census for Stephen Henley, the enumerator wrote that the father and  several of his siblings were  born in Nottingdean. (thats an older name for Rottingdean). The member who added the source  transcribed it correctly as Nottingdean  (and actually FS gets that almost  right as Notting Dean.) It's since been '' corrected'' in the table to  Rottingdean which isn't an accurate transcript.

The best we can do is to add a sharing link and that's a recent innovation . A sharing link isn't available for Find my Past or any other pay website that I know of. There are also many records that aren't even digitised. 

If the information given in the citations is sufficient to find the record, even if you can't access it  has to suffice until shown to be incorrect (and the census transcript is a bonus). We shouldn't think that is a good idea to restrict research to what's freely available on the internet.

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Thank you, Helen, for the info about the old place name.

I was the one who changed the spelling, as someone emailed me to say that was the correct name of the place.

Following Jim's instruction, I was able to see the actual Census, and that is does say Nottingdean, so will change it back.

Answer 3

We encourage members to use sources from free sites or ones that provide free sharing links.

It’s not ideal when profiles have sources hidden behind a paywall but like everything on WikiTree, these profiles are a work in progress.

Hopefully, you or someone else can provide some sources that are not behind a paywall.

Answer 4

Thank you all for your help.

I was able to access the records and I hope others will be able to without the same frustration.

Of course, without input from people who know, I guess the problem will continue to occur for new people.