need help with ancestry.com sources

+5 votes
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I use Ancestry.com, and and starting to copy, paste my sources from there to my wikitree.  The sources help page says that there is a lot of extra information that doesn't need to be cited.  Can anyone help me with what is required and what isn't?  I want to make sure I'm doing this right.  Thanks

I've added a link to one of my ancestors that has sources already added
WikiTree profile: J. W. Blackwell
in Policy and Style by Melissa Jamison G2G6 Mach 4 (49.2k points)

1 Answer

+5 votes
 
Best answer

The sources for the obituaries should also be listed. Augusta Chronicle (when?0 and Anderson Independent (when?)  I'm sure both newspapers run many, many obituaries, etc.

What I like to do with census reports is to list the contents of the whole household, perhaps highlighting the individual concerned in some way, and short list the references underneath, and list the full citation under the sources section.  In that way, each member of the household has the full listing of the household, etc.  The microfiche/microfilm copies are usually better than the indexed transcriptions of the census reports as they may contain additional information not in the census transcription and one can personally figure out the right spelling of names, etc.  It took me some time to find my great grandfather's 1880 census report as his name was so mangled by the transcriber and the census taker didn't correctly spell the name.  Sometimes, however, all one has is the transcribed and indexed report.  Though I personally don't subscribe to Ancestry.com, they have sometimes accumulated more information than the free site, FamilySearch--military records, school records, etc.  You have to pay to get their materials and even if you put a link to an Ancetry report on your wikitree profile only Ancestry subscribers have access to see the information.  There are good points and bad points to using Ancestry for source materials (records).  If you can, swap out the Ancestry site material for FamilySearch materials and more people can directly link to the source (census reports, etc.)

If you're citing just census reports, you can use a chronological format:

===Timeline ===

'''date 1'''

'''date 2'''

the apostrophes indicate the dates will appear boldfaced and so they will stand out from the rest of the materials. 

You can boldface names, too: '''James Blackwell'''

Two pointers to follow here:

1. List all your sources, even newspapers with the date of the publication.

2.  If you must use ancestry.com as a reference point, and perhaps if you want to use them as sources, list the source material in the text under ===residence===, ===census===, ===birth===, and the like with a short reference, e.g. <ref>{1790 US Census]<ref> or <ref>[1911 Australian Census]<ref> and include the full citation for the census report under ==Sources==.  You'll also have to make sure that the tag <references/> is listed immediately below ==Sources==. 

If you need more help, ask me.

by David Hughey G2G Astronaut (1.7m points)
selected by Mary Cole
thank you for taking the time to answer.  I've been reading all the help sections and i think its going over my head, lol.  Thanks for the tips, I'm going to try again!

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