My husband's uncle, Wallis
Wood (1905-1957), received a lot of penny postal greeting cards from "Aunt Nellie."
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.
Aunt Nellie married twice
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This way, if the certs or other sources are ever withdrawn from public view or are otherwise unavailable, the images proving my sources will be on the tree.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.