Personal letter

By Anonymous on Mon, 07/30/2012 - 17:56

Forums

I have a letter my grandmother wrote to me in 1980.  Both my name and location have changed, and I will likely move again, being married to a pastor.

Per EE 3.35, here is my stab at an appropriate citation:

     1.  Laura Ellis Doody (Homewood, Illinois) to "Dear Paula" [Doody], letter, 27 June 1980, page 2; privately held by Paula Doody Ryburn, Richmond, Texas.

That "Dear Paula" looks strange to me.  Should I have restated my full name in the square brackets or is adding my surname sufficient?  And that was my name at the time I received the letter.  Is it correct to use that name today?

Is it correct to then use my current, married name as the owner?  Surely I don't need to add an explanation of 'provenance' due to the name change...?

Would it be acceptable to leave off the city and state, because I will be moving and will update the "compiler" information in my database when I do that.  It seems it would be unmanageable to have to update citations in the database each time I move.

On the other hand, perhaps my software is just not flexible enough.  For example, the template uses the recipient name for both recipient and current owner in formatting the sentence, and appears to not use the "repository" for the owner information.

I may have rambled here, but I would like to know if the citation I typed above is correct; then I can work out how to get that to happen in my genealogy software.

Thanks!

Submitted byEEon Mon, 07/30/2012 - 18:44

Paula, you've done a good job here. The only thing missing that you might want to include is the relationship between the letter's author and the recipient. Adding that could resolve your dilemma over the 'strangeness' of using "Dear Paula."   I.e.:

     1.  Laura Ellis Doody (Homewood, Illinois) to her granddaughter Paula, letter, 27 June 1980, page 2; privately held, July 2012, by Paula Doody Ryburn, Richmond, Texas.

You also asked about omitting your current location because you plan to move and plan to update your database after that. EE operates on the principle that good intentions for the future may not work out as planned and that, to be safe, we cover our bases today. You'll notice that, on that premise, I also added the date at which the document was in your possession.

As for software's lack of flexibility, EE probably should not wade into those waters—but will anyway. We have basically three options: (1) use other software; (2) convince the software developer of the value of adding that flexibility; or (3) write the citation in your software's "free-form" field rather than shoehorning data into predetermined fields that don't fit. If you now tell us that your software doesn't provide a free-form field for citations, then you're back to seriously weighing options 1 and 2.