Saturday, April 6, 2019

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Which Master Source Has the Most Citations?

It's Saturday Night, 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!


For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), answer the question:


1)  Have you done a good job of citing your sources in your genealogy management program or online family tree?  How are you doing?  How many source citations do you have, and how many people are in your tree?  What is the sources to persons ratio?

2)  Which master source (e.g., 1900 U.S. census, Find A Grave, specific book, etc.) do you have the most citations for?  How many?  How did you figure this out?


3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a post on Facebook.


Here's mine:


1) I'm trying!  I'm not nearly done.  I'm almost obsessive now...I've been adding source citations almost every day based on new research, on MyHeritage Record Matches, on Ancestry Hints, etc., all for persons and events that are in my database without a source citation (due to slacking off for many years).  I'm also trying to "improve" existing source citations when I find them by adding better citation details.

At present, my RootsMagic 7 database statistics file (File > Properties) says that I have 103,302 source citations in 1,853 master sources, and there are 53,205 persons in this tree.  My source/person ratio is 1.94, but not every name or event has a citation. 


2)  I think that Find A Grave is the master source in my database that has the most individuals and source citations.  I found this out by:

*  In RootsMagic 7, I created a Source List report (selecting Reports > All reports > Source list > select "Print all sources in database sorted by source name") and browsed the list.  The list for all 1,853 master sources was 3,586 pages long.


The number of citations for some of the master sources were:


**  Find A Grave:  26,378 (25.5% of the total)

**  Social Security Death Index: 4,463
**  Massachusetts Vital Records, 1841-1920:  3,177
**  1920 U.S. Census:  2,807
**  Social Security Applications and Claims Index:  2,480
**  World War I Draft Registrations:  2,070
**  California Death Index:  1,752
**  Vermont Vital Records, 1760-2003:  1,627

**  1930 U.S. Census:  1,320
**  England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975:  1,320
**  1940 U.S. Census:  1,015

** Massachusetts Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988:  915
**  Medfield, Mass. Vital Records book:  868

**  World War II Draft Registrations:  855
**  Roxbury, Mass. Vital Records Book:  785
**  Concord, Mass. Vital Records Book:  706
**  Woburn, Mass. Vital Records book:  705
**  California Birth Index, 1905-1995:  644
**  1900 U.S. Census:  620
**  1910 U.S. Census:  574

3)  I expected to find a better statistics report that listed the master sources with the number of individuals and citations, and in numerical order.  Oh well.


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Copyright (c) 2019, Randall J. Seaver

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4 comments:

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

Here is my answer from 2017. https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2017/10/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-what.html

Since then I have 1592 sources, 9340 citations. I'm sure that Find-a-grave is the most used source.

Lois Willis said...

Here's mine:
https://loiswillis.blog/2019/04/07/sunday-afternoon-genealogy-fun-what-source-have-you-used-the-most-3/

I did similar posts in 2015, and 2017, so I have compared my statistics from these old posts

Linda Stufflebean said...

Here is my post, although it's really a thank you to you, Randy! https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2019/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-31/

Greenhill39 said...

Using Family Tree Maker 2017 I have:
2091 People
3489 Sources, 1.67 citations per person
468 Source Titles
Find-A-Grave via Ancestry is my Source Title with the most detail records

U.S. Find A Grave Index 1600-current: 209
1900 United States Census: 80
Book Stiles Family in America 76


When not using Ancestry for a source, I have not been very consistent naming the Source titles and need to clean up and combine the names of some source titles. When using Find-A-Grave directly I have been creating separate source titles for each cemetery.

I am concerned about the accuracy of the Find-A-Grave records that do not have photos. Even with a photo, the registered location of the death can often be different than the grave site location and the bio information on Find-A-Grave records are not sourced without a headstone photo.

I have two cases where the Find-A- Grave record with a headstone photo is actually a Cenotaph and the person is buried elsewhere. I also have at least one case where the headstone was transcribed incorrectly and the record does not have a headstone photo to corroborate the transcription or my alternative death date.


Family Tree Maker has a Source Tab and you can flip the "LIST BY" filter to show the count of Persons, Citations, or Source Titles.