I am another who uses notes rather than sources. For me, Legacy is primarily a research aid, secondarily a family history collection/archive, lastly and only occasionally, a formal genealogy.
In reverse order, formal sourcing took a hit years back when a particular style was promoted, then a second hit when templates were introduced. I'm primarily concerned with probabilities rather than facts, DNA as fact, and I'm too old to waste time intermittently reworking old source records to the current fashion. Little of family history fits well with formal sourcing. If I'm telling a tale, the origin of the material is usually implied or part of the tale itself. Footnotes and links disrupt continuity for the reader. Any competent pure genealogist who uses my material can be expected to generally find what I found, easily with better tools than I had, but there are rare or unique sources that came to me, and I am careful to document and preserve those. Examples are conversations with those now dead, sentences in old and obscure journals, and material which may vanish, or has. Back more than a decade, I was much helped by the then OPC for Plymtree in Devon regarding my mother's line - from a scion of adjacent Broadhembury, but by which brother? I was given relevant extracts from the Plymtree parish register, but also context regarding history, status and family interactions over 400 years, material otherwise unobtainable and with the authority of a special expert. No parish records were then available for Broadhembury, but that changed just 3 months back, finally solving my "Which brother?" question when Devon parish BMD came online. Sadly and inexplicably, early Plymtree birth records were not included... As a research aid, keeping actual and potential source materials together is obviously valuable to reasoning, but also subtly. It preserves awareness of the possibility of error, both generally, and also specifically where alternative candidates are listed and discussed. Legacy seems principally designed to serve genealogists producing formal reports, rather than family historians or as a research tool. That said, it's flexible enough to serve most needs, and there is wide opportunity to record in notes. As an example from my family, I chose to discuss family circumstances, choices and environment in personal "General Notes". I could have done as well, perhaps better, by creating one or more Events covering Canalization of the River Avon, Turnpikes, Enclosures and drainage of the Somerset Levels. The principal downside to this is that we hope our work lasts. Legacy depends on Microsoft Windows, so it's hardly archival, and the GEDCOM "standard" doesn't support such notes. kb ----- Original Message ----- Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ Online technical support: http://support.legacyfamilytree.com Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
