Hi Scott, > Will my sources stand up to bibliographic scrutiny or rules of evidence? > Probably not. But are they useful to me as indicators of from where my > hypotheses derive? I was like you when I first started to trace my family tree, but as the years went by and I had to keep going back to my sources to confirm spellings, dates, places and notes, etc., I realized that it was much easier to get photo copies of the original. Also, if anyone wanted to know what I base my findings on, I have it at my fingertips. Many times you might find different spellings, and dates. In order to compare all information, documentation is important. This way I don't have to "hypothesize" my findings, I just quote my source and let others do their own "hypothesizing". > As a final, definitive publication > of my family's genealogy... there've been loads of those already ... > and most of them, correctly formatted sources or not, contain errors... > errors of omission and errors of language... sometimes interjected by the > civil-servant clerks who wrote the information from a verbal accounting or > request. (Spelling, letter transliteration, etc.) You are lucky to have many books already plublished on your family tree, but the various mistakes you quoted are a good example as to why documation is important. Dee Dee To unsubscribe: http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/LegacyLists.asp
