Keeping the Letterhead in the Family
I have been enjoying the weekly and monthly updates from Ancestry and have a tip of my own. While visiting a cousin recently, she produced an old pad of ‘steno’ paper with an elaborate letterhead across the top of the page that belonged to our great-grandfather. I took one sheet and had it scanned to a disc and now whenever I correspond with that side of my family I pull up the letterhead and use it as stationary. It is a lot of fun to have and I have gotten much positive feedback from family members.
Â
Peg Sullivan
North Carolina
Record Contemporary Addresses for Posterity
After an especially grueling search for an ancestor’s census record, I decided to take a look at my own family and record the exact location including street address where my husband and I, our parents, our grandparents, and our children have lived for all census records yet to be released. It certainly will make it easier for future generations to find us, especially in our more mobile society.
Diane Murach
A Word to the Wise
I have been researching my family ancestors since 1981, when I was doing all my research by snail mail. I didn’t realize how large my files would get and how important the source of the information I collected was. Well folks, let me tell a little bit of what has happened to me, in not documenting my sources. Someone contacted me with information to share and wanting more on some of our ancestors. Would you believe I had people in the wrong places and dates out of place? What a mess I had. I am now cleaning it up, but had already donated to Ancestry with all the mistakes. Not realizing my mistake of not documenting or asking for the source. Is my face red! I took the word of another researcher that the information was genuine.
Whatever you do, now or in the future, get the source. I have had to delete so many ancestors because of this mistake and no sources. I am now going over all 6,250 entries to make sure there are sources to back up my findings.
A fellow researcher
Click here for a printer-friendly version of this article.
If you have a suggestion you would like to share with other researchers, send it to: mailto:[email protected] . Thanks to all of this week’s contributors!
Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the “Ancestry Weekly Journal,†please state so clearly in your message.
If I get copies of handwritten charts, how can I tell if they are authentic? This just relies on the memory of the person making it, doesn’t it? Or how about “official documents” from the church, or city, how do we verify those?? You didn’t question the priest who wrote them did you?? but none of us can decipher his “fancy” German/Latin writing 100 years down the road and be sure of the content… so what is verifiable??
The tip about recording sources was sure familiar to me as I failed to include them also and am now going back and trying to add them too. Lots of work but will be much better when it is done.
Pingback: Xuincherguixe thinks the Internet is great.
I have a problem of putting ancestors in the wrong place on my tree and do not know how to delete them and put them where they go. HELP!!!! How do I delete them so I can start over.