Ancestry.com Mortality Schedules

chmcgee:

Your instinct has served you well. Whether we're citing an Ancestry image of a population schedule or a mortality schedule, the basic format is the same. Whether you prefer option one or two, EE might add two suggestions:

1. Your phrase "citing ... M1838, roll 7" should not include the roll number because, as you note, Ancestry omits that information. If your citation includes the bracketed comment that you added above in option 1, then your addition is clear enough; but EE would probably drop the self-reference and explain it more succinctly this way:

... citing National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) microfilm publication M1838 [roll not cited, but should be roll 7].

2. Because the mortality schedules are not easy to find at Ancestry without knowing the title of the database in which they appear, the database title needs to be included in the citation. EE would likely render it this way:

        1870 U.S. census, Warren County, Pennsylvania, mortality schedule, Deerfield Township, one page, line 11, family 334, Samuel L. Magee; digital image, "U.S. Federal Census Mortality Schedules, 1850-1880," database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 26 October 2012), citing National Archives and Records Administration, Non-Population Census Schedules for Pennsylvania, 1850-1880: Mortality, NARA microfilm publication M1838 [roll not cited, but should be roll 7].

You'll notice that EE also inserted the ID of the creator of the film into the Author/Creator position before the title of the film. That tells your reader (and you at a later date) that the italicized title represents a NARA title, not an Ancestry title.