Most, like the Valentine's Day card at left, included the name and/or signature of "Uncle Arthur" (as shown below).
"Aunt Nellie" was Ellen Rachel "Nellie" Wood (1864-1954).
Nellie was a younger sister of Wallis's father. I know a lot about her. I've even written about her here, at least a dozen times over the years.
But this post is not really about the valentine. It's about how I had to relearn two key lessons.
For this week's #52Ancestors prompt of "love," I thought it would be fun to write a bit more about Nellie's two marriages: Her first to Walter and her second to Arthur.
Not long after Y2K, I added Nellie and her two husbands to my Wood family tree. So I clicked on the tree to check on what I know. Uh-oh.
Sources? What sources?
I found their names on the tree. I even had a marriage date and place for her Nellie's first wedding. But no sources.
Not good. I had put Nellie, Walter, and Arthur on my tree before I was consistent about citing my sources.
Now I'm forced to retrace my steps to demonstrate how I "know" what I think I know about Nellie, Walter, and Arthur. But that's not my only lesson.
Always read the original!
Nellie's first marriage, at the age of 20, was to Walter Alfred Lervis Sr. (1860-1897). Or so I had recorded all those years ago. I even had a specific date. But alas, no certificate attached.
After well more than an hour of finding nothing on the usual sites, I decided to look for Walter's son, whose existence I had noted on my tree, along with his wife's name.
Yay! I found his marriage cert. Gulp.
His father's surname is clearly shown, on the original cert, as Walter Lewis. Plugging that in, I immediately came up with Nellie and Walter's marriage cert. It showed LEWIS. Not Lervis. For all these years, I've had this man listed with an incorrect surname. Until now. Shame on me!
Capture the source as an image
Why blog about my mistakes? This re-do has one big advantage: Now that I've found the documentation, I'm doing screen shots and adding the media to my tree as genealogical proof.
This way, if the certs or other sources are ever withdrawn from public view or are otherwise unavailable, the images proving my sources will be on the tree. As images, not just links to online sources.
I was researching a distant family member just the other day using the spelling offered by somebody who had transcribed some records. I could find nothing about this person. When I found the original record, I saw that the person doing the transcribing had misread "P" as "B." Suddenly records started appearing! Yep, pays to look at the originals.
ReplyDeleteI think sharing our "oopsies" is extremely important. Besides keeping us humble ;) it provides valuable learning for readers!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading and commenting, ladies. Agree with Deborah, I hope readers learn from my mistakes - just as I've learned from so many generous bloggers who posted about their experiences and offered tips for avoiding pitfalls. Agree with Wendy, can't rely on transcriptions, must trust our own eyes. And agree with Linda, re-dos are excellent learning experiences!
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