I was amused recently by a discussion on a genealogy forum about whether we can use family tree software or a word processor to write our family history. A family tree program such as The Master Genealogist or Family Tree Maker or one of the many other excellent programs can keep track of our names and dates but it cannot be used to write reports or stories for our relatives and others.

Most family tree programs will write a report for us if we click the right button. The sentences may be a bit stilted but they get the facts across. I’m sure you’ve seen many examples; here’s one:

Mary SMITH was born to John Smith and Elizabeth Bennett on 03 April 1856 in Glasgow, Scotland. She appeared in the 1861 census in 45 Shuttle Street, Glasgow, Scotland. She appeared in the 1871 census in 21 Park Street, Glasgow, Scotland. She married John McDonald, the son of James McDonald and Jean Simpson, on 09 December 1878 in Glasgow, Scotland. She appeared in the 1881 census in Lewis Lane, Glasgow, Scotland. She immigrated on 26 July 1883 in Sydney, NSW, Australia. She died on 31 January 1903 in Penrith, NSW, Australia.

The children of Mary Smith were:

And so on and so on. It’s very uninspiring but it does get the facts across. Of course, it may be missing much of the story that you have stored elsewhere as notes.

There are alternatives. Some prefer to sit down and write the whole thing from scratch in a word processor such as Word. Depending on the skill of the writer it is likely to be a much more interesting read, and will probably contain much more of interest than just these bare facts, such as her nursing of local children, her other relatives on whose advice she moved to Australia, and the death of her eldest son on the voyage out here, and other such examples.

Many family tree programs allow the inclusion of this sort of information as well. The program that I am most familiar with is The Master Genealogist (TMG). It not only allows me to decide which facts will be included in a narrative, it allows me to determine how those facts will be reported. I can craft sentences to my own satisfaction and skill as a writer.

The discussion in the forum, as you can probably imagine, was about the ability of a family tree program to write narrative as well as you can yourself in a word processor. The answer, of course, is no. If the question is, can the program automatically generate prose that looks as though I wrote it myself from scratch, then of course the answer is no. You have to spend a great deal of time looking at the sentences it generates and changing them until they make sense, follow on smoothly from the sentence before, and do not appear as though they’ve been generated by a program. So who has written the prose in this case, you or the program? You have, of course.

TMG can do this, but it takes time, with a lot of trial and error. The most recent version of the program allows you to display a preview of the sentence when you are creating or updating a fact. You can update the sentence for that person only, or you can update a “master” that will use it everywhere that the same type of fact appears.

The only good reason that I can see for doing all of this work is if you are going to be generating multiple reports with at least some of the same people listed for different relatives. The same text will come out for each person no matter how often you run reports for different branches of your family. You may do some tweaking in your word processor once the report has been generated but you don’t have to write it from scratch every time.

If you are just going to do it once, as a professional genealogist might for a client, then it is not worth the extra work of setting up sentences in the family tree program, and you are better off doing it directly in the word processor.

Another advantage to using your family tree program is that it will probably generate a list of sources for you, and will cite them, if you wish, throughout the text. This is much less hassle than making sure you are quoting the right source with the right number every time you make a change, and keeping your superscripts correctly numbered.

That’s my two cents worth, and that was my take-away from the long discussion on the forum.

Reference:

APG-L Archives at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index/APG, February 2008.

Elizabeth Shown Mills, author of Evidence! : citation & analysis for the family historian and Evidence explained : citing history sources from artifacts to cyberspace has rewritten the definition of “Genealogy” on Wikipedia, or at least the first two paragraphs. Her text, as she informed* the mailing list of the Association of Professional Genealogists, was as follows:

“Genealogy (from Greek: ?e?ea, genea, “family”; and ?????, logos, “knowledge”; often misspelled “geneology.”[1]) is the study and tracing of families. Because many unrelated individuals can share a common name, modern genealogical research is more than a collection of names affixed to pedigree charts. Rather, genealogy involves identifying living and deceased individuals, differentiating between individuals who bear the same name in the same place and time, establishing biological or genetic kinships, and reassembling families. By modern standards, reliable conclusions are based on the quality of sources (ideally original records, rather than derivatives), the information within those sources (ideally primary or firsthand information, rather than secondary or secondhand information), and the evidence that can be drawn (directly or indirectly) from that information. In many instances, genealogists must skillfully assemble circumstantial evidence to build a case for identity and kinship. All evidence and conclusions, together with the documentation that supports them, is then assembled to create a cohesive “genealogy” or “family history”.[2] Traditionalists may differentiate between these last two terms, using the former to describe skeletal accounts of kinship (aka family trees) and the latter as a “fleshing out” of lives and personal histories. However, historical, social, and family context is still essential to achieving correct identification of individuals and relationships.

“OVERVIEW
“Genealogists begin their research by collecting family documents and stories, creating a foundation for documentary research by which they may discover ancestors and living relatives. Genealogists also attempt to understand not just where and when people lived but also their lifestyle, biography, and motivations. This often requires - or leads to - knowledge of antiquated laws, old political boundaries, immigration trends, and historical social conditions.”

1. ^ The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual (Provo, Utah: Ancestry, in conjunction with the Board for Certification of Genealogists, 2000), Standards 1-72; National Genealogical Society, American Genealogy (Arlington, Virginia: NGS, rev. 2005), lesson 15, “Interpreting and Evaluating Evidence”; Val D. Greenwood, The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy, 3d ed. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2000), Chap. 1, “Understanding Genealogical Research.”
2. ^ The mythological origin of English kings is related in a number of derivative sources, such as The Scyldings, an article at Ancient Worlds. In this article one primary source cited is the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”. The following passage appears in the entry for A.D. 449: “Their leaders were two brothers, Hengest and Horsa; who were the sons of Wihtgils; Wihtgils was the son of Witta, Witta of Wecta, Wecta of Woden. From this Woden arose all our royal kindred, and that of the Southumbrians also.” In this context “royal kindred” refers to English kings. Reference: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Part 1: A.D. 1 - 748, part of The Online Medieval & Classical Library. Accessed 2005 March 11.

Of course, Wikipedia can be changed at any time by anyone, and what she has written has already been changed as I write this. You can read the full Wikipedia article here.

Does it sound like what you do? I’d like to think it’s what I do, collecting original sources with primary information and drawing conclusions  from the evidence. That’s what it boils down to, in the end - can we back up what we say with reliable evidence? Do we record the source of each piece of data we collect so that we know where we got it? Could we find it again, or let others know where to find it?

And are we building family trees or family histories? Do we collect names and dates, or do we try to “flesh out” what we know about our ancestors with the interesting details that make up real lives?

That’s the question that most interests me!

* Mills, Elizabeth Shown, Re: [APG] WIKIPEDIA; email message to apg-l@rootsweb.com on Tue 11 December 2007 at 11:25am (Eastern Daylight Time in Sydney, Australia).

My apologies if I haven’t cited this correctly.

Genealogy, at the very least, should show sources. I am sure that we have all found wonderful stuff on the web about our own family tree with no idea of where it came from or how reliable it is. If you can’t tell where a piece of data came from you can’t tell whether you can trust it.

I recently acquired a copy of Evidence Explained by respected genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills. The book is 885 pages long and was published in the USA. I am in Australia and was hesitant to pay almost as much for shipping as I was paying for the book, so I didn’t rush my order in as soon as it became available. No-one in Australia was then selling the book*. I then found an electronic version for sale** for half the price of the book and no postage so I bought it and spent the rest of the afternoon printing the parts of it that I thought would be useful to me. So far I’ve filled up a 200 page A4 ringbinder.

I have owned Elizabeth’s previous book Evidence! Citation and Analysis for the Family Historian, a slim volume which explains genealogical standards for citation and analysis of source materials, so I was really looking forward to the updated version. I wasn’t disappointed. Two chapters on the fundamentals of Evidence Analysis and of Citation are followed by detailed chapters on the types of records we are likely to come across as sources: Archives; Business and Institutional records; Cemetery records; Census records; Church records; Court and Governance records; Licenses, Registrations, Rolls and Vital Records; Property and Probate; National Government Records; Books, CDs, Naps, Leaflets and Videos; Legal Works and Government Books; and Periodicals, Broadcasts and Web Miscellanea. Each of these chapters have pages of “QuickCheck Models” for each type of source, with general explanations. Examples from countries other than the USA are given, although they are rare. The principles, though, are the same whichever country you need.

So why should you buy it? You know all about source citations, right? You just stick them in your family tree program when it asks you. In truth, the more you know, the more there is to learn. I will let Elizabeth explain it:

“Evidence Explained is a guidebook for all who explore history and seek to piece together its surviving bits and shards. As a guide, it is built on one basic thought:

We cannot judge the reliability of any information unless we know

• Exactly where the information came from; and
• the strengths and weaknesses of that source.”

 She goes on to list the reasons for identifying sources:

1. to provide “proof” of what we write
2. to enable others to find what we have used
3. (most importantly) we identify sources, and their strengths and weaknesses, to reach the most reliable conclusions

This identification of the strengths and weaknesses of a source is where the analysis comes in. It is not enough to record your sources - we have to analyse them thoroughly. Accuracy in analysis comes with experience but the will has to be there from the beginning, to question every assumption and conclusion made.

As an example from my own family tree, I was sent a digital image of a photocopy of a New Zealand death registration by a distant cousin of mine in Canada, who had probably never seen a NZ BDM registration before. In the accompanying family tree file he had an exact birth date for the deceased, even though none of us had ever found one before. When questioned, he said he got it from the death registration.

New Zealand BDM registrations are copied directly as a single entry. The page headings are not included. In the death registration, the column for the age at death was followed by the column for the cause of death, duration of illness, name of attendant and date last seen. My cousin had run the two columns together and given the age at death as 79 years 14 days. The mistake was understandable, perhaps, given that the headings for the columns were not shown, but perhaps there was some wishful thinking there as well.

The source for the birthdate, then was the death certificate, usually a reliable source, but because it had been read incorrectly it was not reliable in this case. The most that could be said for the birthdate was circa 1804, rather than 6 August 1804, using this source.

So the analysis may continue as you find more information. It is never finished. There is no “preponderance of evidence” that leads to a verdict once and for all, as in a legal court. A new document, perhaps a will, may come into your hands that changes your evaluation of all the evidence you had previously. You can’t just discard new information that disagrees with your conclusions; you have to look at your conclusions, and all the information you had based these conclusions on, again, and perhaps come up with different conclusions.

For the family tree you have spent years working on to be any use at all to future generations it must be done properly. With the help of Elizabeth’s new book, there is now no excuse.

* Gould Genealogy in Adelaide is now selling it.

** I bought it from www.footnote.com. I have been searching the site to see where I bought it and I can’t find it. I eventually found this link from Dick Eastman’s genealogy blog, although I’d already bought it by the time he wrote about it. I must have found it through Google. Footnote is a great site for finding images of American historical documents, but not so good for shopping for other items.

Source:

Mills, Elizabeth Shown, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2007.

Note: The family tree that I, personally, have put on the web here is a long way from the standard I aspire to, and it raises a common question for genealogists - Now that I know how I should have done it, should I go back and redo all the citations I did years ago? For me, the answer is Yes, and so it becomes a question of time. I am slowly working my way through them, starting with my direct ancestors and working outwards, and it will take a lot of time until I am happy with it. I argued with myself for a long time about whether to hold off putting it on the web until I was happy with it, and I finally decided that if I leave it too long the people who can give me more information will have died. So I’ve put it up there, incomplete citations and all.