Great explanation, so if I was using something like a birth record, which is in a set of other birth records from different people, the source would be “Bell County Kentucky Birth Records 1910-1911” and the citation would be something along the lines of “Page 26 entry for John Doe” or something like that? Just trying to get an example outside of the census records- just so I have a really good idea of it!
The family number is on the census page itself. The exact location on the census page can vary from census year to census year. This example is from the U.S. Census in 1880. The Aaron Turpin family was family #150 in dwelling #148. The George Keith family was family #151 in dwelling #149.
The “family number” in the census is called Family ID in RM’s source template.
Dwelling numbers and family numbers in the U.S. census can differ from each other because of multiple families in the same dwelling and less often because of one family in multiple dwellings. At the beginning of this section of census pages, family #1 was in dwelling #1, family #2 was in dwelling #2, etc. But by the time we get to dwelling #148 and family #150, there must have been two different dwellings that each had two families.
Thankyou so much, I have one more question, in a thing like an Obituary, what would the source name be, in the specific newspaper obituary (online) that I’m talking about the title of the page is “(Name) Obituary” , since I don’t have a collection of other obituarys, would the name of the source just be “(Name) Obituary” or should I somehow label it something like “(Newspaper Title) Online Obituary”
In the standard RM template for obituaries, the source part of the footnote is just the name of the newspaper and where it is published, like Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles California. So that could be the name of the source. The citation part of the footnote is then items such as the date the obituary appeared, the page number, and the name of the deceased. That’s treating an obituary essentially just like any other newspaper article with the newspaper as the source. And you don’t have to remember all that. Just use RM’s source template for obituaries and it will put the right information in the right place.
RM’s way of doing obituaries is pretty standard in genealogy. It’s not just RM’s source template that does it that way. But I don’t like the standard approach to creating citations for obituaries. To me the actual source is the (usually unknown) family member or family members who wrote the obituary. And to me it’s not the newspaperness of the obituary that makes it an obituary. It the obituariness of the obituary that makes it an obituary. And in fact, I have a lot of newspaper articles in my RM database that are not obituaries. And I have a lot of obituaries in my RM database that didn’t come from newspapers.
The standard way of creating citations for obituaries seems to me not to distinguish obituaries from any other newspaper articles. So it seems to me that for obituaries, the newspaper is more like a repository than it is a source. And I treat all obituaries in RM the same no matter whether they came from a newspaper or if they came from somewhere else. But that’s just me, so just starting out you probably want to stay with the standard by using RM’s source template for obituaries.
Pick up a copy of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ book “Evidence Explained.” It is a hefty volume that explains everything you need to know on the correct way to cite your sources.
At times it can get a bit over-the-top, but there are sections of Quick Sheets before each chapter with good real-life examples that you can use as templates.
If you start by correctly citing your sources you are going to be a step ahead in your research.
There are several editions of the book out. You can probably buy an older version through Amazon or bookfinder.com cheaper than the most recent one and probably won’t be missing much. I am still using the original version I bought when it first came out.
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You have tons of great advice here. My approach to naming my sources is to always start with the country eg England, 1881 Census. England, Norfolk, Parish Baptisms. This way my sources for each country all group together. For my citations I always begin with surname firstname so that all citations for a surname sort together eg for a census: SMITH John household, 1881 Census, Norwich and for a baptism: SMITH John, Baptism, 1842, Norwich. For me, the purpose of the source name and citation name is to be able to find what I’m looking for in a list quickly. This can be completely different to the content of the footnotes which is what appears in reports etc.
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