I use personal knowledge as a starting point or if I have no other sources. I prefer to have at least two or three sources for each event, but I do have some personal knowledge sources for events when there was never anything found in published documents or vital records.
If a sibling or cousin tells me so and so died last night then I will use that until I find better information. If a parent tells me something that happened long before I was born then I have to assume they were present at the time or witnessed whatever they are telling me. Some things can never be verified like when I was told an ancestor was shot off his horse during the civil war. I've never been able to find anything on that. When I was told another person froze to death in a swamp, I found that in a newspaper. However, the newspaper didn't mention that he was drunk when he fell into the swamp so there's no way to prove that. I never found his death certificate and I tried to get the coroner's report only I was told there wasn't one even though the newspaper mentioned the coroner's name and that there was an inquest. Maybe I should try the SourceWriter template since after going through my sources to clean them up I've noticed my earlier use of personal knowledge only shows the source with nothing in the details. There's something to be said for doing the sources right the first time and not years later. Fortunately those are the only sources I have that are incomplete. Bill From: Cathy Pinner [mailto:genea...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2016 11:29 PM To: legacyusergroup@LegacyUsers.com Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Citing Personal knowledge Ed, There is a SourceWriter template for Personal Knowledge. If you use Basic Sources, you can enter something similar. I include whose knowledge and how they know or think they know - ie something that enables you to evaluate the knowledge. eg: If my brother tells me he's a grandfather again on the day of the birth, I can be sure of the date - unless he just says "last night" and doesn't know at that stage whether it was before or after midnight. But if I ask him now when one of them was born, I can't be so sure of the information he gives me unless he looks it up as he's not good with dates. Takes after our father - who gave us birthday presents but rarely on the day itself. Cathy 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
