Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness

(This post was originally written but unpublished on June 21, 2024 and published as written at that time.)

Today's focus (and really my focus the past many weeks) is on working on various project teams at WikiTree.  Projects focus on a specific area of genealogy research and sourcing.  In a nutshell it means doing genealogy work on someone complete unrelated (or unknown) to you.....a complete stranger.

One of my favorites is called the Sourcerer's Challenge.   In this project we are asked to choose from a list of WikiTree person profiles that have no documented source associated with them.  The requirement is to only add ONE source, but I challenge myself to fully source the profiles I work on with as much data as I can find.

I look for substantiation of the information in a number of ways and places online. 

Birth Death Dates/Locations 

For Birth, I generally will accept the following sources:

• Birth/Death Certificates
• Birth/Death Registers
• Military Draft registration data provided by the actual individual
• Newspaper Announcements
• Social Security records/indexes
• Bible records
• Obituary information
• Gravestone inscription
• Baptismal records

When I'm unable to find corroborating evidence of information I will mark it as Uncertain on the WikiTree data fields or in the case of Biographical information I try to write a Research Note OR Add a Maintenance Category for the appropriate Geographical Location.