Adding a New Source Citation in an Ancestry Member Tree Profile

I almost always create a source citation for a record relating to a person in my family tree in my RootsMagic genealogy software program, using the source templates based on Evidence Explained as a guide.

I wanted to see how easy it was to add a new source citation to a profile in an Ancestry Member Tree.
For this test, I noticed that I had an approximate death date for Andrew Seaver (1705-1771) which indicated he probably had a probate record, but I did not have a source citation for the Death Fact.  Here is his profile in my Ancestry Member Tree:

I highlighted the Death fact on the screen above to see if I had a source citation for it, but there was no "purple snake" from the Fact to a source.

Can I find a record that indicates a death date?  I searched for him on Ancestry.com, and easily found a 29 page probate record in the Massachusetts, Wills and Probate Records, 1635-1991 database:

Over on the right side of the screen above is the source citation information created by Ancestry.com.  It is:

Description

Notes : Probate Papers, No 19962-20064

Source Information

Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, Wills and Probate Records, 1635-1991 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.
Original data: Massachusetts County, District and Probate Courts.

I could attach the record to the person in my tree, and have the source automatically created by Ancestry.com.  But I want to create a new source in Ancestry with Evidence Explained quality for this record to determine how easy it is to do.  I created a source citation in RootsMagic for this record:

Massachusetts, Wills and Probate Records, 1635-1991, indexed database with digital images,  Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 Novamber 2015), Middlesex County, Probate Papers. No. 19962-20064, Case Number 20061 (images 1173-1201 of 1265), Andrew Sever administration, 1771; Original data: Massachusetts County, District and Probate Courts.

I want to try to put all of that into Ancestry.com as my source citation.  On the profile for Andrew Seaver (first screen above), I clicked on the "Add Source" link below the list of Sources.  That opened the "Create Source Citation Information" screen (two screens below):

As you can see, there are four areas to enter data - Source, Citation, Media and Facts or Events.

I clicked on the "Create a new source" link under "Source" and filled in the fields as best I could:

The problem with this method is that Ancestry has a "one size fits all" source citation - it's designed for a book, with an author, title, publisher, publisher location, publication date, call number, note and repository.  I added information to the Title, Publisher, Publisher Location and Note fields.

At the bottom of the screen above is a link to "Save Source" (not shown).  I did that and the "Create Source Citation Information" screen opened.  I filled in some of those fields:

Again, I clicked the "Save Source" button on the bottom of the screen above (not shown).

I did not attach the Media item - maybe I'll try to do that in another post.

I did click the "Death" Fact in the list of "Facts or Events" in order to associate the Source with the Death Fact.

Okay, I think I'm done.  When I go back to the Profile page for Andrew Seaver, I clicked on the "Death" Fact and now see the "purple snake" going from the Death Fact to the newly added source citation:

I can click on the "View" link on the source citation and see the source citation for this Fact:

Again, it is not "all together" - it is separated into Citation information, Source information, and Repository information.  IMHO, it is better than the Ancestry-supplied source citation because it has true citation information - the record series, image numbers, the person's name, etc.

This took me about 15 minutes to figure out the first time.  I can do a RootsMagic source citation for this record in less than two minutes because I know how to do it.  I'm sure that practice would reduce the time on Ancestry.

Readers may wonder why I don't just use the Ancestry-supplied source citation and be happy with it. You know, I could copy and paste it into RootsMagic, or attach record images and the automatic Ancestry sources to persons in my Ancestry Member Tree.  Well, I've spent the last 6 years trying really hard to craft Evidence Explained quality source citations for persons in my RootsMagic database, and I really don't want to have an Ancestry-supplied source citation in my RootsMagic database.  It's as simple as "I don't want to crap up my database after spending a lot of years crafting quality source citations."

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/11/adding-new-source-citation-in-ancestry.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver

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