In my last post, I discussed how to clean up and manage sources within your tree. For this post, I am going to talk, specifically, about the Sons of the American Revolution applications that can be found online. This is just my way of doing things, but I decided for the time being to ONLY link 4 things to each application:
1) the applicant's name (There were many times that I had to open the application online in order see how the applicant was related to my ancestor and then had to add multiple people in my tree to get to the person who applied. *I only added the names and not birth dates/death dates/marriage dates or places that can be found within an application.* Taking the time to do this, however, has helped me discover siblings of my ancestors that I did not know about, which has been great! It has also given me more names for my tree to help with my research as well as any cousin matches that get linked to my tree through the AncestryDNA test that I did.)
2) the applicant's birth date (I figured adding this information was pretty safe and accurate since the applicant is the one that filled that information in.)
3) the name of the person the applicant is using for membership
4)a military fact for the person that served in the Revolutionary War (I had to go add this for most of the people) I typed "Revolutionary War" in the details part of the fact.
The next thing I did was take away all of the citation details and citation texts found on the right side of the screen and added my own text. (Again let me stress that there may be a much better way to do this, but the way I did it helped me accomplish what I needed it to and is very easy to hunt through.) If there is someone out there that can tell me the formal/official way to do this, I am all ears! Here is the way I did it:
Line One: the name of the person that served in the Revolutionary War listed with last
name first (all caps) followed by a comma and the rest of his name
Line Two: Revolutionary War
Line Three: SAR Application for (insert full name of applicant in all caps)
This was one of the sources where I discovered a whole bunch of duplicates - and I REALLY did not need 6 copies of a single application just because each summary page shown when you first go online lists a different person found in the application. Labeling everything in the citation text section made it easy to get all of the duplicates next to each other so that I could figure out which one I wanted to keep. I, personally, decided to keep the source citation that linked to the ACTUAL applicant's summary page or if that wasn't possible (because I didn't have that source citation in my current list), I saved the one that linked to the person that served in the Revolutionary War. Goodbye duplicates! More purging!!!!! Woo-hoo! Below is a picture of my new and improved list of Source Citations for the Sons of the American Revolutionary War Applications. It is MUCH easier to sift through!
One thing I noticed was that I had records for multiple applicants that had applied for membership through the same person. Listing the Citation Text as I mentioned above makes it SUPER EASY to check quickly whether or not I have that application already. So, as I continue my research on Fold3.com and go through my Ancestry.com green leaf hints and look through other SAR applications, I will be able to easily tell whether or not I have located a new source citation.
There is a wealth of information in each of these applications, so it is very likely that I will go back (at a later date) and decide to attach other facts (such as the names of the other parents listed in the application along with birth dates/places, death dates/places, and marriages/places), but since my goal has been to clean things out, the four facts I chose to link initially have done more than enough to get me on the right track. PLEASE NOTE THAT SAR APPLICATIONS USED TO NOT REQUIRE AS MUCH PROOF AS THEY DO TODAY, SO BEFORE YOU ATTACH ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE FOUR FACTS I MENTIONED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE POST, YOU MAY WANT TO CHECK AND FIND OTHER WAYS TO CONFIRM THE INFORMATION.
I will discuss Linking Facts to the US Censuses in my next post. Until then - have fun!
1) the applicant's name (There were many times that I had to open the application online in order see how the applicant was related to my ancestor and then had to add multiple people in my tree to get to the person who applied. *I only added the names and not birth dates/death dates/marriage dates or places that can be found within an application.* Taking the time to do this, however, has helped me discover siblings of my ancestors that I did not know about, which has been great! It has also given me more names for my tree to help with my research as well as any cousin matches that get linked to my tree through the AncestryDNA test that I did.)
2) the applicant's birth date (I figured adding this information was pretty safe and accurate since the applicant is the one that filled that information in.)
3) the name of the person the applicant is using for membership
4)a military fact for the person that served in the Revolutionary War (I had to go add this for most of the people) I typed "Revolutionary War" in the details part of the fact.
You can see these four facts next to the arrow pointing to the left in the picture below.
The next thing I did was take away all of the citation details and citation texts found on the right side of the screen and added my own text. (Again let me stress that there may be a much better way to do this, but the way I did it helped me accomplish what I needed it to and is very easy to hunt through.) If there is someone out there that can tell me the formal/official way to do this, I am all ears! Here is the way I did it:
Line One: the name of the person that served in the Revolutionary War listed with last
name first (all caps) followed by a comma and the rest of his name
Line Two: Revolutionary War
Line Three: SAR Application for (insert full name of applicant in all caps)
This was one of the sources where I discovered a whole bunch of duplicates - and I REALLY did not need 6 copies of a single application just because each summary page shown when you first go online lists a different person found in the application. Labeling everything in the citation text section made it easy to get all of the duplicates next to each other so that I could figure out which one I wanted to keep. I, personally, decided to keep the source citation that linked to the ACTUAL applicant's summary page or if that wasn't possible (because I didn't have that source citation in my current list), I saved the one that linked to the person that served in the Revolutionary War. Goodbye duplicates! More purging!!!!! Woo-hoo! Below is a picture of my new and improved list of Source Citations for the Sons of the American Revolutionary War Applications. It is MUCH easier to sift through!
One thing I noticed was that I had records for multiple applicants that had applied for membership through the same person. Listing the Citation Text as I mentioned above makes it SUPER EASY to check quickly whether or not I have that application already. So, as I continue my research on Fold3.com and go through my Ancestry.com green leaf hints and look through other SAR applications, I will be able to easily tell whether or not I have located a new source citation.
There is a wealth of information in each of these applications, so it is very likely that I will go back (at a later date) and decide to attach other facts (such as the names of the other parents listed in the application along with birth dates/places, death dates/places, and marriages/places), but since my goal has been to clean things out, the four facts I chose to link initially have done more than enough to get me on the right track. PLEASE NOTE THAT SAR APPLICATIONS USED TO NOT REQUIRE AS MUCH PROOF AS THEY DO TODAY, SO BEFORE YOU ATTACH ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE FOUR FACTS I MENTIONED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE POST, YOU MAY WANT TO CHECK AND FIND OTHER WAYS TO CONFIRM THE INFORMATION.
I will discuss Linking Facts to the US Censuses in my next post. Until then - have fun!
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