In Part 1 of this series (Building a good Public Ancestry.com tree – Part One: sources, citations, facts, and proof), we talked about some of the fundamentals of how to understand the components of a properly sourced a tree on Ancestry.com. In Part 2 (Building a good Public Ancestry.com tree – Part Two: Attaching facts to sources, and using “wrong” facts in your tree), we talked about how it’s best to attach a fact to each source as it’s presented, as opposed to attaching all sources to the preferred fact. In Part 3 (Building a good Public Ancestry.com tree – Part Three: Attaching online records to your tree), we walked through putting those approaches into practice using sources found in various Ancestry.com databases. In Part 4 we’ll walk you through how to attach your own research to your Ancestry.com tree.

When we talk about “your” research, it’s a broader concept than just the work you’ve done, it also includes the sources you’ve found outside of Ancestry.com. We’ll cover both here, but think of this part as focusing on all the data you’ve found that supports your tree that other Ancestry.com users might not have knowledge of or access to. We have a lot of Google Books sources in our trees, along with original research conducted in cemeteries, courthouses, and family interviews, and bringing that context outside of what’s commonly found on Ancestry will be of huge value to those researching the same ancestors as you.

One thing we’ve learned is that for all of what we’ve put out in original research, we’ve gotten back much more from other researchers who have done their work on our lines. It’s pretty evident that by giving more publicly, you will receive back more than you give.

One caveat before we begin on this Part of the series, the tool we use primarily to source our research isn’t Ancestry.com, it’s Family Tree Maker. This is about the only portion of the series where we’re not practicing what we preach, but he goal was to show how to use Ancestry.com to create a good, solid tree that can be shared Publicly, and keeping with that we’ll use only that tool to achieve the desired result. Just understand, we haven’t done as much work on establishing a process for these sources in Ancestry as we have for the rest of parts of this series.

Create Media for your source

Before we create a source, we prepare a .jpg of the source we’re going to share so we’re ready to attach it into the tree. Creating that image consists of 3 steps:

• Create an image/transcript of the source
• Attach our citation to the image/transcript
• Create the final image that contains both the image/transcript and the citation

This was a lesson learned the hard way. Our first major research was with a local cemetery that contained a large number of Rick’s Father’s Mother’s family, and that had largely been uncatalogued. After gathering a large number of documents and photos, we attached them to our tree to the great delight of a couple of researchers who we’d been in contact with and who had been working on this line for over a decade each. We attached photos of the documents and/or graves, created the proper citation info in Ancestry, attached it our tree and left it at that. Within two days, both researchers took the images from our source, attached just them to their trees, and presented them without any of the citation information we’d attached to the record. For all intents and purposes, it was presented as their own photos, and to this day we see them shared on other people’s tree with absolutely no source info attached.

Since then, we’ve learned to embed our citation info in every publicly shared image so that no matter where the image is saved people can always source the original if they care to. Here’s how we do it, using a Marriage Record found in the Kenosha County, Wisconsin courthouse.

Create an image/transcript of the source

This record is typical of something you’d find a courthouse. At the time, we were looking for information on James Treadwell and came across a marriage record for someone we weren’t familiar with, but we’ve long had a theory that James moved to Wisconsin with a brother Ephraim, so the name popped out at us. We didn’t purchase a copy of the records, so we jotted down the information in our notebook. Upon further research, this is Ephraim’s son, and so we’ve transcribed the record to attach it to our tree.

It’s essential you transcribe the information as it’s recorded, even if that information is unclear or incorrect. You can address it later either in the citation, or notes in your tree, but you’ll usually only have one chance to get the original information down accurately. You’d rather have the accurate record later, and interpret it later, than to do the interpretation while you’re at the courthouse, and find out later your interpretation is incorrect. In this example, that’s exactly what happened to us. I originally wrote off this

record because if he was Ephraim’s son likely couldn’t have been born in Baltimore, MD and there was no Balitmore/Ballamore, NY. Additionally, his mother’s name would have been Marina not Mary Ann, so I assumed it was either wrong on the document or that it was not Ephraim’s son. Two years later I’ve come to find that Ephraim Baker Tradewell was likely born in New Baltimore Township, NY and that Mary Ann was Ephraim’s previously unknown first wife, and he married Marina after Mary’s death. It was good that we copied the record exactly as we read it.

The transcription is a Word document, typed to match our notes. For other document type, we’d insert an image in Word document. So if it’s from a Google Book, we’d use a Snipping Tool to make an image grab of the page we’re citing, and insert that into Word. The same would be true for a photo of a grave, or a capture of a webpage.

Attach our citation to the image/transcript

We promise not to go on a long discussion of citation standards here, but suffice to say that you should have one and we strongly endorse the standards described in Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills. You should craft your citation and include it below your source in the Word document. For transcriptions, you would type it below the main text, and for photos you’d create a text box under the image and place the citation inside. This is great not just for sharing, but also for your own documentation, to ensure you have properly cited sources available for all your records.

Create the final image that contains both the image/transcript and the citation

Once you have the Word document created with the source info and the citation, use a Snipping Tool to make a .jpg capture of the final document. But doing it this way, no matter how your image is shared online, the original citation will survive for future researchers to reference.

Create the facts supported in the source for your Ancestors

Again using Ephraim Baker Tradewell’s marriage record as an example, we can identify several facts that this source supports: husband’s name, wife’s name, husband’s residence at the time of marriage, Husband’s birthplace, marriage date and location, and the names the husband’s and wife’s parents.  Create each of those facts, as they are captured by the record, before creating the source. It will be easier to attach the source to all the facts than it is to do it the other way around.

Add the Source

From the “Facts” view of your ancestor, click “Add Source…” and If you already have defined your source, select it. If you haven’t already defined the source, select “create a new source…”.

If you have already defined your repository, select it, otherwise click “create a new repository…”.

Enter as much of the Repository information as you prefer, following your citation standard and click “Save Repository”.

Complete the Source information as you prefer, again following your citation standard. For us that means attaching the “Source List Entry” information (as defined in Evidence Explained, 9.34 for this example) in the “Title” field. When you’re done, click “Save Source”.

With the Source information properly selected in Box 1, turn to Box 2 – Citation. Enter your citation, using your standard (we’re using the “First Reference Note” from EE), and enter the date of the source and the “Transcript of Text” if you can. This transcript box will be indexed by Ancestry.com, and will be a part of the search results of anyone looking for keyword matches that are in this box. This is rarely completed on Ancestry, but it’s very powerful for matching others with your work.

Scroll down to Box 3, and select each of the facts that are supported by this source. Click “Submit” when you’re done.

You should now see your Source attached to your facts. We included detail in the Notes for the facts where there were some questions about what was in the record.

Next, “View” the source and select the “Media” tab on the right. From here, click “add media to source”. Select the .jpg file we created earlier, and enter the date, location, and type of document. Click “Done” when you’re complete.

Next, for each person named in the source, repeat the process above (other than defining the Source and Repository) and attach the appropriate facts. This is a bit of a pain, and it’s one of the reasons we do our Sourcing and Citations in Family Tree Maker…it’s MUCH easier.