Does Sourcing Really Take That Much Time?

Someone, in another forum, asked how to cite a source. Someone else asked “Why?” as in Why bother?  In their opinion,  “Sourcing takes too much time!”

Does it really?

The inquirer had found something of interest in a back issue of  Magazine of Virginia Genealogy, for which Ancestry offers images within a database. She helpfully included a link.

As always in such cases, we have 2 things to cite:

52 Corporals

Yesterday’s QuickTest presented, for analysis, one page of a record—a military roster providing data on “Corporal Young Lemmas of Company B, 1st Arkansas Regiment, C.S.A." Suzanne Matson earns the prize for the first person to spot the targeted problem. No, a military company would not have 52 corporals. And “Corporal Lemmas” was not a corporal at all.

Trust: The Researcher's Five-letter Bad Word

Trust. That’s such a comforting word. It relieves so much stress. It lifts the burden of being always vigilant, the angst of worry whether something or someone will betray you, or the fear of making a wrong decision.

In historical research, the reality we deal with is 183 degrees different from the rose garden we’d prefer to work and live in. For us, trust is naïve. Trust creates problems of its own. Today’s three images demonstrate that, using an 1800 census record from Greenville County, SC.