Citing World War I Troop Transport Passenger List

Sherry, you've chosen wisely. Very often, when using online images, we do not have sufficient data to cite something as an original document. Citing the database, and then the specific image or entry, is the best approach in these cases.

In one regard, your draft leaves the reader wondering about what you actually have. What is "Roll 455" a part of? Those rolls do not appear in the actual title of the database ("U.S., Army Transport Service, Passenger Lists, 1910-1939") and that database does not have rolls.

At the search page for this database (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61174/) under "Search information," we see that three different things are cited for this database:

The first of the three is the identity of the database you are using. The second and third sources refer to textual records (physical documents) filed in "boxes" of original documents, with no reference to film. One collection covers incoming passengers; the other covers outgoing passengers. The latter is the one that should apply to your record.

This leaves the reader uncertain as to why “Roll 455: 15 August 1918” is included in your database title. When I use your details to locate the record, I still don’t see anything that cites the roll or a National Archives microfilm collection that the roll would be a part of.

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All things considered, EE’s citation to this set of records would be one of these:

     CITING COLLECTION URL > PATH:

          1. U. S., Army Transport Service, Passenger Lists, 1910–1939,” database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61174/ : accessed 24 September 2020) > Outgoing > Jason > 9 Feb 1918–7 Apr 1918 > image 65 of 81, “Headquarters Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, New Jersey: Passenger List of Organizations and Ca_uals,” p. 63, no. 152, ​Cummings, George A., 835191, PVT, Battery “C” 69th Coast Artillery Corps (CAC), departed Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 15 Aug 1918, aboard the USS Jason; citing "Lists of Incoming Passengers, 1917–1938," NAI no. 6234465, and "Lists of Outgoing Passengers, 1917-1938," NAI no. 6234477," U.S. National Archives—College Park, Maryland.

CITING EXACT URL:

          1.  U. S., Army Transport Service, Passenger Lists, 1910–1939,” database with images, Ancestry  (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61174/images/44509_3421606189_0257-00413 : accessed 24 September 2020) > image 65 of 81, “Headquarters Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, New Jersey: Passenger List of Organizations and Ca_uals,” p. 63, no. 152,  for ​Cummings, George A., 835191, PVT, Battery “C” 69th Coast Artillery Corps (CAC), departed Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 15 Aug 1918, aboard the USS Jason; citing "Lists of Outgoing Passengers, 1917-1938," NAI no. 6234477," U.S. National Archives—College Park, Maryland.

(I might also note that a hole punch in all of the pages obscures one letter of the page title.)

You'll note that I've added two things:

• The name of the document you are citing is identified before the specific data that you take from that document;
• A second layer (citing ....) is needed to tell us what source(s) Ancestry is citing.

And, yes, it's lonnnnnnnng. Citations to U.S. National Archives material almost always are long. Adding on the citation to the online database makes them even longer. If we try to shorten the data in the full citation, we'll end up without sufficient data.