Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

My grandfather Matthews' creche in the 1950s.

To all those who celebrate, Merry Christmas! And a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous New Year to all!

________________

(2) "The Creche". Digitized slide ca. 1952, privately held by Anna C. Matthews, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Rockville Centre, NY, 2017. The original slide passed from the photographer, Stephen D. Matthews, to his daughter, Anna, via his second wife, Kathleen (Dwyer) Matthews in 2008.

Digitization of WWI Service Files at LAC Finally Reaches the Smiths!

Approximately three years ago I estimated, and hoped, that the project at Library and Archives Canada to digitize Canadian Expeditionary Force service files would reach my grandfather and his brother by the end of this year. Amazingly enough, I was right!

Between November 15 and December 15, the archivists at LAC digitized a little over 150 boxes of files which brought them to Box 9059, my grandfather's file was in Box 9049 and his brother's file was in Box 9058 - they just made it!

Reading through the WWII files of my grandfather and another granduncle had taught me that the contents of these WWI files could be anything from uninteresting administrative paperwork to interesting but disturbing details about their experiences in the war.

Before seeing his file, I knew that my grandfather's older brother, Herbert Austin Smith, spent time as a prisoner of war, but like so many before and after him, it seems that he did not speak much of his experiences. Certainly, my mother had never heard any details. I was hoping his file could tell me more and it did.

This (3) and other forms in Uncle Herb's file gave the place and date of his capture; the 2nd or 3rd of June, 1916 at Sanctuary Wood in Ypres, Belgium, the site of some well-known battles and now a very interesting looking museum.

The entry on the card above noting that a telegram had been sent to my great-grandfather, Hon. George R. Smith made me so sad for my great-grandparents and the rest of the family. I can only wonder exactly how much they knew during the two and a half long years of Uncle Herb's captivity and how much the stress of that time may have contributed to my great-grandfather's death in 1922 at only 62-years-old.

After his capture, Uncle Herb was taken from Belgium to a camp in Dulmen, Germany and then to another in Minden, Germany. I'll need to do more research to learn about these camps, but there was a website that said that the camp at Minden was among the worst.

I also found an interesting site for anyone who had a family member who spent time as a POW during WWI. The digital archives of the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) Prisoners of the First World War. There I found scans from a book (4) that the Germans sent to the Red Cross containing names of prisoners who arrived at the camp between 10 August and 11 September 1916.

Sadly, some of the last forms contained in Uncle Herb's file are from his discharge in 1919 due to medical unfitness. It seems that the was suffering from what we would now call PTS. He may have been having symptoms before his capture at Ypres, but after two and a half years of forced labor under harsh conditions without enough to eat, he was almost certainly was.

In an upcoming post, I will share what I learned about my grandfather's service. For today, I will just sit with this new information about Uncle Herb and remember the sacrifice that he, like so many others, made for all of us.

_______________

(1) Smith, Herbert "Herbert Smith Joins The Colors." Undated clipping, ca. 1915, from unidentified newspaper; Smith Family Papers, Privately held by Anna C. Matthews, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Rockville Centre, NY, 2017. Inherited in 1996 by Janet (Smith) Matthews from her mother Marjorie (Dean) Smith, sister-in-law of Herbert Smith. Janet gave the clipping to her daughter, Anna C. Matthews, in 2008.

(2) Smith, Herbert Austin. Photograph ca. 1915, privately held by Anna C. Matthews, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Rockville Centre, NY, 2017. The original album passed from the photographer and subject's brother, George W. Smith, to his wife, then to his daughter and is now in the possession of his granddaughter, Anna C. Matthews. Captions throughout the album indicated that the photographs in it were taken between 1912 and 1917. There is no caption in the album for this photograph but Herbert Smith was identified in other photographs and by his niece, Janet (Smith) Matthews. He and George W. were the only Smiths to serve in WWI.

(3) Library and Archives Canada, "Personnel Records of the First World War," (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng : viewed December 18, 2017) Online Research>Military heritage>First World War : 1914-1918>Canadian Expeditionary Force>Personnel Records of the First World War database>search for Smith, Herbert Austin; PDF, p. 57

(4) International Committee of the Red Cross, “Namentliche Liste der vom 10 August bis 11 September 1916 im hiesigen Lager eingetroffenen englischen Kriegsgefangenen [Name list of English prisoners of war arriving in the local camp from 10 August to 11 September 1916,]” (https://grandeguerre.icrc.org/: viewed December 19, 2017) Search for…Smith, Herbert>Validate>SMITH F to SMITH R>SMITH H, CANADIANS>SMITH, H.A.>Image P.A. 6609, entry 317

Citing WWI Service Files from Library and Archives Canada

Finally, the day has arrived! Library and Archives Canada's years-long project to digitize service files from WWI has finally reached my grandfather and granduncle, George Washington and Herbert Austin Smith!

Instead of writing a post about what I've found in those files, I'm writing about citations. Why? Because I would rather not publish uncited posts anymore.

In the seven chapters of Dr. Jones' Mastering Genealogical Documentation that I have read so far, he has cited examples of online images of materials not previously published, but he has not addressed them specifically, so I skipped ahead to Chapter 15 - Citing Online Images of Previously Unpublished Material(2).

In this chapter, Dr. Jones lays out four options for citing these images; two that he does not recommend because they do not meet genealogy standard 5(3), one that does meet the standard but would be unnecessarily long except in limited circumstances, and one that he recommends in most cases, which I will try to use here.

Library and Archives Canada, "Personnel Records of the First World War," (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng : viewed December 18, 2017) Online Research>Military heritage>First World War : 1914-1918>Canadian Expeditionary Force>Personnel Records of the First World War database>search for Smith, Herbert Austin; PDF, p. 57

I'm sure, especially with the addition of the waypoints, that any reader would be able to find Uncle Herb's file, but does this citation aid the reader in evaluating the record? Because it does not address the creation of the underlying original documents, I think that it doesn't.

There is another arrangement of citation elements that Dr. Jones suggests that contains more information about the original record.

Who - The Ministry of the Overseas Forces of Canada

What - Personnel File of Herbert Austin Smith

When - The file has entries from 1915 to 1964

Wherein - PDF, 57

The online publication information is used to answer Wherein - Library and Archives Canada (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng : Online Research>Military heritage>First World War: 1914-1918>Canadian Expeditionary Force>Personnel Records of the First World War database: 18 December 2917).

Citation:
The Ministry of the Overseas Forces of Canada, World War I Personnel File of Herbert Austin Smith (1915-1964):PDF, 57 "Personnel Files of the First World War," Library and Archives Canada (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng : Online Research>Military heritage>First World War : 1914-1918>Canadian Expeditionary Force>Personnel Records of the First World War database : 18 December 2017).

I like that this citation lets the reader know who created the original record but some of the other elements feel awkward to me. I think I'll use the first one for now and revisit it as I work through Mastering Genealogical Documentation.

Again, if you have any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, etc. please let me know.

_____________
(1) Troopship photograph ca. WWI, privately held by Anna C. Matthews, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Rockville Centre, NY, 2017. The original album passed from the photographer, George W. Smith to his wife, then to his daughter and is now in the possession of his granddaughter, Anna C. Matthews. The photographs in the album were taken between 1912 and 1917. There is no caption in the album for this photograph.

(2) Jones, Thomas W. "Citing Online Images of Previously Published Material." In Mastering Genealogical Documentation, 155-162. Arlington, VA: National Genealogical Society, 2017.

(3) Board for Certification of Genealogists [BCG], Genealogy Standards, Kindle edition (Nashville, Tenn.: Ancestry, 2014), location 291 of 1013, for standard 5, "Citation elements."

Gen Doc Study Group 6 - Determining a Source's Publication Status

Reference:
Jones, Thomas W. "Determining a Source's Publication Status." In Mastering Genealogical Documentation, 63-70. Arlington, VA: National Genealogical Society, 2017.

"Researchers determine a source's publication status because citations to published and unpublished sources differ greatly. Citing a publication as if it were unpublished, or vice versa, would mislead readers. The citation would fail to communicate." (1)

Publication status as it pertains to genealogical sources really has to do with current availability. Something that was not originally published may now be widely available online, like census records and something that was widely published originally may now be difficult to find with only rare copies available. A book may be self-published and even have an ISBN (International Standard Book Number), but if it was not made available for sale or other distribution, it is not considered published for our purposes.

Two things that I found interesting in the reading were the topics of online sources and hybrid sources.

Most online sources would be considered published, but some would not and it has nothing to do with the cost of access or paywalls as I originally thought. Anyone willing to spend the money can access the Quebec church records of the Drouin collection from the comfort of their own computer, but no amount of money will get you home access to some records on Family Search because they must be accessed from the Family History Library, a partner library or Family History Center. Published vs. unpublished.

The example of a hybrid source that spoke to me was the family Bible with handwritten birth, marriage, and death records. The Bible was published but the genealogical data inside was not. Both must be addressed, both sources are necessary to properly evaluate the information inside. The records of a family beginning in the 1800s contained in a Bible not published until the 1900s would be considered differently from records beginning in 1850 contained in a Bible that was published the same year or earlier. I have scans and copies of records from a Bible in my family, but I cannot properly evaluate them according to the Genealogical Proof Standard because I have only seen the Bible in person once and have never seen the publication information.

Here are a couple of other tricky examples from my own research:

The three-volume set of blue binders pictured above are a genealogy of one of my Swedish lines. It starts with Helje Larsson and Maria Ericsdotter, my supposed 5th great-grandparents and, on my line, comes down to my father and mother since it was finished shortly before my birth. There is nothing to indicate that this work was published.

The entire three volumes are typed as you see above (click the image for a larger view), there is no publication information. Still, I did some searching online before making a determination. Bertil Freidlitz, one of the authors, does have another genealogy that appears on WorldCat, but even that is only available through Family Search at the FHL, an affiliate or an FHC.  I have to imagine that this work made it to several families descending from my 5th great-grandparents, but even that wouldn't necessarily make it published. I consider this work to be UNPUBLISHED and would cite it as follows:

(Thanks to Marceline Beem who reminded me in her post for this chapter to break the information down to answer these five questions and to Marceline and other panelists who had the idea of color-coding the citation elements for greater visual clarity.)

Who - Annie & Bertil Freidlitz

What - Kyrkebo-Släkten Släktbok for Ättlingar Till Helje Larsson och Maria Ericsdotter I Kyrkebo, N. Hestra [Kyrkebo Family Book for Descendants of Helje Larsson and Maria Ericsdotter from Kyrkebo, N. Hestra]

When - 1968

Where (in the source) - I: Andra grenen [Second branch] VI : 5-1

Where (is the source) - private collection of Anna C. Matthews

Annie & Bertil Freidlitz, Kyrkebo-Släkten Släktbok for Ättlingar Till Helje Larsson och Maria Ericsdotter I Kyrkebo, N. Hestra [Kyrkebo Family Book for Descendants of Helje Larsson and Maria Ericsdotter from Kyrkebo, N. Hestra], 1968; I: Andra grenen [Second branch] VI: 5-1. Privately held by Anna C Matthews [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Rockville Centre, NY, This book offers only a generic list of materials used, with no specific documentation for any piece of data.

Because this source is unpublished, we need to let the reader know where it was found. And also because of its unpublished status, the Wherein comes before the Whereis in the order of the elements in the citation as we learned in chapter four.

Another example from my bookshelf is The Vine and The Branches, a history of Minton, Quebec that includes local genealogies, among them a branch of my own family.

The narrow focus of the work and the publication year of 1989 made me question its current availability but a search of WorldCat brought surprising results.

While certainly not widely available, you can find this work at some well-known archives like Library and Archives Canada and even the Allen County Public Library here in the States, well known for its extensive genealogy department. So I would consider this to be a PUBLISHED work and cite it as follows:

Reg Conner, The Vine and the Branches (North Hatley, Quebec, 1989), 241

I did not include the publisher's name in the parentheses because I consider this book to be self-published and Reg Conner's information is already included.

If you feel so inclined, please let me know what you think of my classifications and citations. I need all the help I can get.

I would like to send thanks to Randy Seaver who included my last Gen Doc Study Group post in his "Best of the Geneablogs" post for November 19-25th and to DearMYRTLE who mentioned it during last week's study group.

Just remember, if you compare this to a workout video, I'm the one over to the side doing the low-impact version. The panel participants and of course, Dr. Jones and Elizabeth Shown Mills, have so much more experience and are doing the advanced workouts. You can find the hard-copy of Dr. Jones' book at NGS and the Kindle version at amazon.com. And you can register to watch the replay of the Chapter 6 study group here and continue the conversation in the Google+ community here.

(1) Thomas W. Jones, Mastering Genealogical Documentation (Arlington, VA, 2017), 63.

My Grandfather's Connection to the Beginning of the Atomic Age

Seventy-five years ago today, December 2, 1942, at 3:25 p.m. under the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, the atomic age began with the first self-sustaining chain reaction.

My grandfather, Howard Bierly Matthews, was not a nuclear physicist, not even a scientist. He was an accountant. How boring. Or was it? Here is an excerpt from his autobiography:

"At the same time, the Physical Science Departments of the University were involved in the research called the Manhattan Project, which resulted, on December 2, 1942, in the first successful chain operation of an atomic "pile", located under the West Stands of Stagg Field, one block from my office. Involved in this project were such men as Nobel Prize winners Arthur Compton, Enrico Fermi and James Franck. Everything was highly secret; some of these men didn't even use their own name on campus; they were renamed, like in this telegram which Fermi sent to Conant at Harvard to announce the successful pile reaction: "The Italian navigator has just landed in the New World."

My connection with the aforesaid was in providing space for what was going on and seeing that these areas were restored to their former condition when the project ended. (This included determining that the buildings were free of contamination. For this purpose, I had a team of scientists, headed by Professor Walter Bartky, on whose advise I relied.) Whole buildings had to be vacated [for the Manhattan Project], - Ryerson Physical Laboratory, the Mathematics Building, etc. and additional space had to be acquired in the Museum of Science & Industry, and the entire Armory on the edge of Washington Park was rented and altered for the Army Corps of Engineers.

The end/purpose of this was so secret that until the day of the first atomic reaction under the West Stands I did not know what that was, although I had been "cleared" of course and was issued the necessary ID badge. And when we rode the night train to Washington on matters of a secret nature we were not permitted to be in the same sleeper with Fermi and others for fear a slip of the tongue might identify him."

I can't remember how long ago I first read my grandfather's story. It evolved from the speeches he was sometimes asked to give because people found his story inspiring; he had gone from high school dropout, after the death of his father when he was 15, to university vice president at the age of 48.

Oh, how I wish I had know these stories and had the chance to ask him questions when he was alive!

A few years ago when the stash was uncovered in my step-mother's basement I found a cookbook put together by the ladies of the University of Chicago Settlement League. My grandmother was a member and apparently so was Mrs. Laura Fermi, wife of physicist Enrico Fermi. My eagle-eyed mother found four of Mrs. Fermi's recipes in the cookbook.

An obscure little piece of history to commemorate the beginnings of the nuclear age and my family's connection to it.

Gen Doc Study Group 5 - Capitalization, Italics, Punctuation and other Citation Subtleties

Reference:

Jones, Thomas W. "Capitalization, Italics, Punctuation and other Citation Subtelties." In Mastering Genealogical Documentation, 49-62. Arlington, VA: National Genealogical Society, 2017.

Dr. Jones assurance at the beginning of this chapter that punctuating a citation is just as easy as punctuating a sentence is not exactly reassuring when you had to take a remedial English class as a college freshman because you never learned proper comma placement. Actually, I think that punctuating, at least with commas, is probably easier in a citation than a sentence, so I think I'm okay.

This chapter again refers to Chicago Manual of Style and Evidence Explained several times, so I did my second reading of the chapter with both books out, sort of. There's no room in my budget for books at the moment, and the copy of CMOS that you see above was due at the library last week. This week I started a free 30-day trial to the CMOS online subscription. I didn't think I would like the way it ties me to my computer to read it, and I don't, but it was worth a try. I just ordered the hard copy of the 17th edition through inter-library loan, so it should be here before my trial is up. Hopefully, by the time it is due back at the library, I will have room in the budget to purchase either an online subscription ($39 for one year) or a copy of the book (currently $53.22 on Amazon).

Back to the topic at hand. My comments aside, most of the punctuation covered in his chapter is common knowledge but there were a number of things that I noted.

Apostrophes
I'm pretty comfortable with apostrophes but I did learn from CMOS that lower case letters used as nouns form the plural with an apostrophe and an s (1). For example, there are two n's in Anna or two t's in Matthews.

Brackets
I already knew that square brackets are used to note text added by the author, but I didn't realize that you could use them around the reader's translation of a title in a foreign language. I have a copy of an unpublished family history that takes one of my Swedish lines back to my 5th great-grandparents. It was researched and compiled by a Swedish couple and is in Swedish.

So, once I learn how to cite the whole work, the title could be written as Kyrkebo-Släkten Släktbok for Ättlingar Till Helje Larsson och Maria Ericsdotter I Kyrkebo, N. Hestra: Enligt forskning och uppteckning 1965-1968 av Annie och Bertil Friedlitz [Kyrkebo Family Book for Descendants of Helje Larsson and Maria Ericsdotter from Kyrkebo, N. Hestra: According to research 1965-1968 by Annie and Bertil Friedlitz].

Commas
I thought that use of the Oxford comma was passé, but COMS recommends that it be used to prevent ambiguity.

As for other uses, I may have to study this in more depth, that remedial course was a long time ago.

Dashes (– and —)
I guess it was my first time through Evidence Explained that I first learned about en dashes (twice the width of a hyphen or the width of the letter n) and em dashes (twice the width of an en dash and the width of a letter m). Who knew I'd been using the hyphen on my keyboard incorrectly all these years?

There is actually a bit more information about dashes in Evidence Explained that isn't found in this chapter of Mastering Genealogical Documentation. Elizabeth Shown Mills also explains the uses of the 2-em dash and the 3-em dash as well as substitutions. (2)

Greater than signs ( > )
Also known as waypoints when used in a citation, I think this is the most useful part of the chapter for me.  I had seen one or two discussions of waypoints before reading this book, but both of those (which I can't find now) discussed why waypoints were not appropriate or the best option for the citation being discussed in that instance. There wasn't much discussion there about where waypoints would be most appropriate, but I thought they would probably be the best way to cite Quebec church records found at the BAnQ (Bibiothèque et Archives nationales du Québec) website, which has no search functionality. Waypoints, which take the reader step-by-step from the collection to the individual record, would be the best way to show someone how to find a record here quickly.

Panelist Marceline Beem gave an excellent step-by-step example of waypoints which you can find on her blog here.

Capitalization, colons, ellipsis dots, hyphens, italics, numerals, parentheses, periods, quotation marks, semicolons, and slashes are also addressed in this chapter, all in alphabetical order, handy for future reference. Although it can sometimes seem fussy and complicated to apply proper capitalization, italics, punctuation and other subtleties to citations, we have to make sure we are communicating clearly to our readers.

You can find the Chapter 5 hangout here and you can buy Dr. Jones book from NGS (discounted for members) or in Kindle format at Amazon.

(1) Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (Chicago University Press, 2010), 353 for section 7.15.

(2) Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained, 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 2010), 78, for "Dashes vs. Hyphens."

Gen Doc Study Group 4 - Assembling Components into Clear Citations

I thought that I would have this post up early last week but I have had an awful cold that really knocked me flat! I wasn't even able to finish reading this chapter until Monday.

Anyway, now that things are returning to normal, I was able to finish the chapter and watch a replay of the hangout while reading the homework submitted by the panelists.

Chapter 4 - Assembling Components into Clear Citations

Reference:

Jones, Thomas W. " Assembling Components into Clear Citations." In Mastering Genealogical Documentation, 37-48. Arlington, VA: National Genealogical Society, 2017.

Before a genealogist can assemble the components of their citation, they must understand the source that they are citing. Over the past few months, I have realized that I need a better understanding of one of the sources that I use frequently; Quebec church records. I hadn't known until recently that the church books are considered transcriptions. It just hadn't occurred to me not only because there are witness signatures at the end of each record, but because I recognize many of them. Some, because they appear in several records, some because I have other examples. Since I learned that these records are considered transcriptions I have looked more closely at the signatures on each record I consult and I have found a record with witness signatures that not only appear to be written in the same hand, they appear to be in the same hand as the rest of the record. In other words, they appear to be in the hand of the minister. This could be a complicated answer and I could devote a post to just this topic, but I'll wait until I have more information. In the meantime, I am researching the history of these records in more depth to see what I can find out about when priests and ministers would create the duplicate copies of these entries and which copy actually went to the civil authorities.

The topic of Quebec church records was actually discussed in this week's hangout because panelist Dave Robison used one of these records as an example in his homework. There was some discussion of the record itself, but mostly it was about the citation.

Also in the study group was a very interesting discussion about whether or not to include the website in citations for census and other widely available records. It turns out that at least some journals have been omitting this information for years. My opinion, based on the study group discussion (you can register and view here) and my own experience is that it depends on your audience and their knowledge of genealogical records and repositories and also on whether the repository matters to the quality of the image. For instance, in my own research, I have found more legible copies of some Canadian census records on the Library and Archives Canada website than on Ancestry. If I were citing one of those records, I might want to point the reader toward the more legible copy.

This is just one example of the most important point made in this chapter; clarity for the reader is the most important factor in assembling a citation. No rigid format, no one template is the answer for every citation. The researcher/author knows the source the best and must point the way for others but not in a one-size-fits-all manner.

As addressed in the Genealogy Standards(1), however, there is certain information that should always be captured in a citation, if known: who, what, where, when, and many times wherein.

I'm still very uncomfortable creating citations, but I'll give it a whirl with a document that should be straightforward enough.

Death Certificate of Benjamin Smith, my 2nd great-grandfather:

Both sides of the certificate copy with the citation digitally added in Paint.

Who - who created the document? State of New Jersey Bureau of Vital Statistics

What - What is the document? Death Certificate No. 1769

When - When was the document created? 1908

Wherein - Where in the death certificates of 1908 is the document? Benjamin Smith

Where[is] - Where is the document now? New Jersey State Archives, Department of State, Trenton.

So, those are my elements, here is the full citation.

     1. New Jersey Bureau of Vital Statistics, Death Certificate No. 1769 (1908), Benjamin Smith; New Jersey State Archives, Department of State, Trenton.

Most of the other examples I have are either privately held items or were the result of online research and I'm not feeling ready yet to get into online records, so I'll leave it at that for today, except to say, that the chapter covers much more material than I did here in my post. You'll learn a lot more from Dr. Jones and DearMYRTLE's panelists than you will from me, at least for now. So buy the book and watch the hangouts!

(1) Board for Certification of Genealogists, Genealogy Standards (Nashville, Tenn.: Ancestry.com, 2014), 7, for standard 5, "Citation Elements."

Private G.W. Smith

My mother brought me this photo recently with a few folders of papers that belonged to the subject, my grandfather, George Washington Smith.

On the back of the photo, in my mother's handwriting, it says 

May 1919 France
Private G.W. Smith
technical storekeeper

That's the first I've ever heard about my grandfather having that particular title/responsibility. The only story I'd ever heard before this was that he spent his 21st birthday (February 22, 1919) at a train station in France waiting to get back to his unit after delivering a truck back to its unit. In his WWII service file, there is a reference to the fact that he was a machine gunner in WWI, but my mother had never heard that.

In a few days, Library and Archives Canada will release another update on the scanning of WWI service files. I can't wait to learn how much closer they are to the Smiths!

Gen Doc Study Group - Week 3 - Citation Settings, Forms and Shortcuts

If someone had told me at the beginning of my genealogy journey that I would spend my Saturday genealogy time reading from The Chicago Manual of Style I probably would have asked them what they were smoking, but here we are. After reading Chapter Three of Dr. Jones' Mastering Genealogical Documentation and watching a replay of DearMYRTLE's Week Three Study Group, that's exactly what I did.

Nine years ago when I started my first Ancestry tree and tried to upload my own documentation for the first time, Ancestry wanted me to enter quite a bit of data including a citation. I gave it a shot, but I'm pretty sure I gave up on it; I wasn't really sure I was doing it right and it seemed pretty complicated. That pretty much sums up where I am with citations today but I'm hopeful that Dr. Jones' text will at least, as someone put it in the study group, make me more comfortable and confident.

I wouldn't have thought that it would make sense to teach shortened citations before full citations, but in some ways, it makes a lot of sense. The rules of shortening a citation - for the subsequent mentions of data items in a particular source - are not the same as the rules for full citations. And learning it this way, with examples and exercises that provide the full citation gives the reader exposure to full citations that are constructed properly.

Rules for shortening citations can be found in The Chicago Manual of Style, in Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence Explained and in Genealogy Standards. Shortening a citation requires that you take out as much information as possible for brevity, but leave enough for the reader to be able to remember and identify the source. Chicago Manual of Style, Evidence Explained, and Mastering Genealogical Documentation all give guidance as to how this can be accomplished, like:

• Abbreviate titles
• Include authors' surnames only
• Do not change the word order of a title
• Include the place, type of record, and time period
• Omit the publication and repository information and the medium through which it was viewed

I am reading a book that I will write up in a future blog post. If I write about my possible 7th-great-grandfather who was mentioned in the book the citation would read:

     1. Atkinson, Jay, Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston's captivity and revenge in colonial America (Lyons Press: Guilford, Connecticut, 2015), 193

If I later wrote about the information contained in the book pertaining to Count Frontenac of New France and his campaign to terrorize English colonists, the citation would read:

     4. Atkinson, Massacre on the Merrimack, 82.

Something I am less sure of, here is a citation for a census record for my paternal grandmother's family in 1920. I should say that I did not use Evidence Explained to create the full citation when I used it in a blog post last year. I used the format I saw on what I believe to be a reliable blog.

1920 US Census, Manchester, Hartford Co., CT, population schedule p. 4B, dwelling 45/family 46, Carl Anderson household, digital image Ancestry.com (http: www.ancestry.com accessed 15 Jan 2017); NARA microfilm T624, roll 181

If later in the same post, publication or report I were to cite a statement about their friends, the Olsons, it would read:

1920 US Census, Manchester, Hartford Co., CT, population schedule p. 27B, dwelling103/family 114, Charles Olson household. 

I am able to eliminate the medium through which I viewed the record and the microfilm publication and roll numbers because they are the same. Then again, I may not have needed the Ancestry information anyway. I have to watch again, but I think I understand from the Week 8 hangout that because census records are so widely available now, the website through which you viewed them is considered irrelevant. But don't quote me on that.

Shortening a citation when the source is referred to more than once is not the only way to save space in a post, report or article. Abbreviations, initialisms, and acronyms are another way and are discussed in detail in COMS and EE (see what I did there?).

Another very important point made in the study group and in all of these readings; when you are writing, always use the full citation each time until the final draft. That way you won't inadvertently use a shortened citation before the full citation if the order of your reference notes or citations changes along the way.

Settings, Forms, and Shortcuts are important building blocks in learning how to cite data in genealogical communications. But I do think I'll have to learn to write full citations before I really have confidence in my shortened ones.

Gen Doc Study Group - Week 2

I can't recommend DearMYRTLE's Gen Doc Study Group enough. This series is not just for beginners - anyone can learn something from this wonderful panel. The examples of work product that were shared in Week Two were fantastic and so interesting. Want to see an example of Dr. Jones' editing for the NGS Quarterly? Watch.

You can find DearMYRTLE's new blog, Myrt's Musings here - then click on Hangouts near the upper-right of the page. To register for upcoming hangouts, click on the NEXT Hangout tab, which usually has all of the hangouts for the current month. To register for past hangouts click on Archives. This is the best way to view the hangouts because you will be able to see the chat that occurred during the hangout and follow links to the panelists' homework and any other sites they discussed.

Chapter Two of Mastering Genealogical Documentation is "Noncitation Aspects of Genealogical Documentation." Dr. Jones not only brings his considerable experience to this chapter, he also weaves in content from The Chicago Manual of Style and Genealogy Standards.

There was a lot of great material in this chapter but the part that interested me the most was the section on reference note content; maybe because I have no experience with creating reference notes from multiple citations or that include notes about the data or the sources, etc.

Each chapter of Mastering Genealogical Documentation ends with a series of questions. In Chapter One the questions were only about the material in the text but in Chapter Two there were also exercises where Dr. Jones uses his own revised NGSQ (National Genealogical Society Quarterly) article as the reference.  So, having read the chapter twice, watched the hangout and read the panelists' homework, I completed the exercises which were helpful but left me wanting to explore a bit more.

Next I turned to the article that the NGSQ study groups will be discussing this month, Sue Hahney Kratch, "James Wesley Mooney of Will County, Illinois: Business Records Reveal His New York Family." from the September 2015 issue. The article and research were interesting, but it was the reference notes that I read with a new appreciation for their content. Previously, I only read the notes to get information about the sources, now I was looking to see how each note was constructed, how many citations were contained in each one and what additional information the author had given us in each note. I know it's mostly my inexperience talking, but wow, it certainly felt as if the research was the easiest part of this article!

As Dr. Jones explains in his Preface, this book is a text, not a reference like Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence Explained, and he is giving us the tools to craft citations no matter the source. The elements of Chapter Two are part of the foundation without which our documentation will utterly fail in its goals - communicating the qualities of the source, how to find the source and showing the scope of the genealogist's research.

I Finally Visited My Local Family History Center!

Grave of Betsey Kezar, my 4th great-grandmother.
The book I read at the Family History Center traces her line
back to my 10th great-grandfather, George Keyser.

Nine years into family research and I have finally visited a Family History Center. Nine years! That tells me that I am not using the Family Search website enough. If I were, I'm sure I would have had a reason to visit before now.

A week or so ago I was trying in vain to catch up on my blog reading over lunch when a post I read suggested using Google Books in family history research. I have used Google Books in the past, but I'm sure I haven't searched for all of my ancestors, so I plugged in Moses Bean Hatley, the ancestor I wrote about in my last post and the name of the place he settled in Quebec, to see what I would get.

One of the books that came up on that search was available to view on Family Search but only from a Family History Center. So, it was finally time to make the arduous half hour journey to Plainview to check out the library.

What I found was more like a reading room than a traditional library. The main room was lined with bookshelves and file cabinets and also had three large tables; one where two volunteer staff members were helping researchers, one containing two desktop computers for public use and another table with internet connections for users who want to bring their own laptops to plug into the center's internet.

I was able to get on a public computer right away and, since no one was waiting for it, use it until I left.  I finished taking notes just as the daytime hours were ending, so I didn't have a chance to explore a lot or ask about the available resources. But I did see a shelf copy of The New York Genealogical & Biographical Society's New York Family History Research Guide and Gazetteer. That's a book I've been wanting for a couple of years now, but the $90 price was prohibitive, so I was excited to see that. 

From the conversations I was hearing behind me I gather there are some very serious researchers working regularly at that center. So, I'll have to borrow a laptop and get myself there again very soon.

I'll keep you posted and let you know when I make that grueling trip again.