Citing a marriage found on a child's birth record

By Anonymous on Sat, 12/19/2015 - 12:01

Forums

Greetings,

I am trying to discover the best way to cite an ancestors marriage, found on their childrens birth record.  Using ScotlandsPeople, I found two Statutory Birth records (images), that contain the childrens parents, marriage date and place, mothers maiden name, father and his occupation.  I did search a Family History Library film trying to find this Irish marriage. Parts of the film was missing and illegible.

For the Footnote I have: District of St. George, Midlothian County, Register of Births, 1899, John Paterson/Helen Hyndman, marriage; Digital image. Scotland, ScotlandsPeople (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk: accessed 10 December 2007.

In my ressearch notes I entered under the names of the child's parents:

1840 October 8, Castle Knock, Dublin

I'm thinking now, possibly if I use a ; after 1899 (child's birth), add to my citation date & place of marriage, that this will be a 2 layered citaiton.

Am I anywhere close for a descriptive citation? Thank you.

 

Submitted byEEon Sun, 12/20/2015 - 12:27

Mary, your question actually involves two separate issues: the use of evidence and the creation of the citation.

Use of Evidence

The snippet you display does not contain evidence for the parental marriage. It provides evidence of the father's identity and it provides evidence of the mother's identity. It does not provide evidence that those two individuals married or lived together as a couple. To cite this document as evidence for a marriage would mislead other researchers, as well as yourself.

Creation of Citation

Because your link provides only a snippet, we cannot see the context of the entry or the details needed for citation. Working with the footnote draft you provide, three tweaks are suggested:

  1. The elements we cite in a footnote, for a single source, should never be separated by periods. A period—a hard stop—says "I'm finished with this." Consequently, anything you put after that period is perceived to be a different source. In your case, you have only one source, which you viewed in an online edition published by a website.
  2. Your footnote draft gives part of the essential information, but more is needed. For example, your snippet appears to be cut out of a page of a register, but the page number is not shown or cited and the register's identity is unclear.(Perhaps that district has one single register called "Register of Births, 1899," but you do not use quotation marks to indicate that you are citing an exact title. Perhaps that district has a multi-volume series called Registers of Births for the year 1899; if so, then the specific volume needs identifying by volume number or the specific time frame. Depending upon the repository (which you do not cite), there may be an archival ID (call number) that the archives wants you to cite for relocation purposes.
  3. It's also unclear whether you accessed this birth register through a specific database at ScotlandsPeople—perhaps the "Statutory Births" database for which EE's 9.56 gives a citation model?  If so, as you will notice at 9.56, the citation leads with the name of the database, not the identity of the document. That is because the displayed images did not contain self-evidence of the identity of the register and collection. In that example—and possibly in your case—we must rely upon the identification cited in the database, which may or may not err. Therefore, the 9.56 example cites the database, states that we are viewing an image, cites the data that the db gives for the specific record, then adds that the db itself is "citing Statutory Registers no. 733/00 0014."

By way of comparison, this is the 9.56 example:

First Reference Note
       1. “Statutory Births 1855–2013,” database and images, ScotlandsPeople (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk : accessed 1 April 2015), image, birth registration, Ralph Wallace, born 6 March 1859, registered 25 March 1859, Parish of Coldstream, County of Berwick; citing Statutory Registers no. 733/00 0014.

Submitted byMark-Con Sun, 12/20/2015 - 13:26

I'm confused, mainly by the question, but also a bit by the answer.

First, the snippet appears to be a birth register entry for a Paterson child born on 1 December 1870 and registered on 16 December 1870.  The column listing parents seems to indicate they were married in Dublin on 8 October 1860, although it does not specifically say "married".  (I can't see the rest of the page, particularly the column headers.)  Yet the reference note cites a register from 1899 which contains information from a marriage in 1840.

Clearly it is a birth registration that would be cited (along with the database and website of course) because that's what we're actually eyeballing.  A note appended to the end of the citation could explain that it is the marriage information that was of interest, though that data was probably already given in the main text.

I'm not clear on why the information about the marriage could not be used as evidence, even though it is secondary information.

Mark-C, thanks for weighing in. You'll undoubtedly notice my broader message to Airvine9 and Mary. Here, I'll comment on the other points you raised.

Yes, since the header on the page (which Mary did not show) does explicitly identify that date notation as the date of parental marriage, we can use it as evidence of the marriage. As you suggest, our citation should add a statement saying that the registration of the child's birth (supposedly in 1899) gives that 1840 date for the parental marriage.

 

Submitted byairvine9on Sun, 12/20/2015 - 14:39

The header from the top of the page will help. It shows that the data below the parents' names is the date and place of their marriage. You can also see that the father was the informant, so he would have provided the marriage information as well as the child's birth details. Here is an example.

Thank you all for your comments regarding my post of citing a marriage found on a child's birth record. I was concerned about the size of the file so therefore did post only a snippet. I know better now.

In Evidence Explained Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, Second Edition, I first read 9.56 regarding Scotland: Statutory Registers. Due to the fact that I had searched, viewed, and downloaded an image, I used Civil Reg., Statutory Registers, Scotland (Online Images), for my Master Source.  With Online Images I did not see any page numbers for Source Entry, First Reference Note or Subsquent Note. Therefore I did not include it. In the Online Images example, p. 483, I do see periods.

With John Paterson, the Engraver research over the years, I wish to do justice to John and Helen/Ellen, by providing a proper source citation of their marriage, from two of their twelve children's birth records. 

Additional comments are welcomed and thank you each and everyone. Yes, I did upload the full birth record.

Mary

 

Thanks, Mary, for uploading the fuller image. For future reference, here at EE we don't put a size limit on the upload (although we've been tempted, sometime, to put a word limit on the length of the queries <g>).

You are to be commended for seeking as much evidence of John and Helen/Ellen's marriage as possible, rather than stopping with just one source. If we use only one source and it is wrong, then we're wrong. Especially is this important when we cannot find a record of the marriage itself.

As you probably suspect, the ScotlandsPeople example used in the 2d edition is based upon the website offering as it existed when the entry was created in 2007. The third edition is based on the website data and configuration of 2014–15. With websites, we do have a constantly moving target. That, in fact, is the primary reason why EE has to be updated so often.

With regard to periods used in the middle of a citation in the "Online Images" portion of 9.56 (whatever edition). The use of internal periods is the standard format for a Source List Entry, but not for a Reference Note.  The two types of citations are punctuated differently because of the way they appear in source lists, as compared to reference notes. To get technical here:

  • Footnotes and endnotes are written sentence style, with each source presented within one "sentence." If we have several sources supporting an assertion, those sentences may be combined into the same note, thereby creating a "paragraph." The periods at the end of each sentence serve the function of separating the sources.
  • In source lists (aka bibliographies), each source is in a "paragraph" by itself, with the sources arranged in alphabetical order. Back in the day when almost all citations were to other authored sources, researchers developed the practice of alphabetizing them by the surname of the author. In order to show that the author's name was inverted, they inserted a comma between Surname, Given Name. Then, because the name had an internal comma, they created a clear division of the name from other citation elements by putting a period between every element of the citation:  Name. Title. Place of Publication [etc.]  This use of periods works in source lists because of the fact that each source is in a "paragraph" by itself, as opposed to reference notes in which a single note may group several sources together into one "paragraph."

Best wishes, while dancing on the head of a pin,

Thank you Editor. I understand and appreciate your comments regarding punctuation. I am appreciative of technology but prefer to be a "hands on" type of person with visiting archives, libraries, cemeteries and the places where ancestors have lived. 

Happy Holidays to you,

Mary

Submitted byEEon Sun, 12/20/2015 - 16:26

Thank you, Airvine9, for supplying the header information that Mary's snippet does not show. You are obviously correct—and you underscore an important point: if our extracts from a record book do not present our "specific information" in context, then the fragment of the record can be easily misinterpreted.

Mary, in our answer above, you may strike Tweak 1. That leaves the issues questioned in 2 and 3.

Submitted byMary Hentschelon Sun, 12/20/2015 - 16:55

Editor, I just read your reply regarding the header information. Yes, obviously correct. Thank you!

Footnote:
District of Calton, Lanark County, Register of Births, 1870, entry no. 1527 for Kenneth Paterson; digital image, ScotlandsPeople (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk: [AccessedType] 10 December 2007); General Register Office of Scotland, 'by kind permission of the Registrar General', Crown Copyright.

Short Footnote:
District of Calton, Lanark County, Register of Births, 1870, entry no. 1527 for Kenneth Paterson.

Bibliography:
Scotland. Lanark County. District of Calton. Registers of Births, Marriages, and Deaths. Digital image. ScotlandsPeople. http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk: 2007.

Comments:
The name Kenneth must be an important given name in the Paterson line, as the first son was also named Kenneth.
Again, the marriage data for John and Helen, 8 October 1840, near Castle Knock, Dublin. This is legible writing

Submitted byACProctoron Mon, 12/21/2015 - 04:52

I'm too familiar with those Scottish records. Is the date & place of marriage provided by the informant of the birth, or are they verified in some way by the clerk?

I have cases of military records that indicate marriage details, but they're secondary information. Isn't this case very similar?

 

Tony

Yes, Tony, the situation is similar. Let's compare:

  • In the case of the military records that indicate marriage details, whether the information is primary or secondary depends upon who provides the information. If one of the spouses provides the information, then it is firsthand (primary). If the information is provided by someone who attended the wedding, that person would also be speaking from firsthand information (primary). If the information is provided by someone who was not a party to the event, then it would be secondhand (secondary) information.
  • In the case of the birth record, in which the father is the informant and the clerk asks the father for his marriage date, then the marriage date entered on the birth registration is primary information because the father had firsthand knowledge of the day he married. That is not to say, of course, that he remembered it correctly. Primary information can be misleading or false because informant do misremember or prefer to give answers that better fit their needs.

 

Submitted byMary Hentschelon Tue, 12/22/2015 - 10:37

Curious about what proof would the Registrar  have of marriage to enter on the child's birth record, I e-mailed ScotlandsPeople yesterday. Roslyn Robertson | Internet Officer
National Records of Scotland | New Register House | Edinburgh, responded with the following reply, "Birth records back in the 19th century, as is the case today, required no proof of the parent's marriage. Details were provided verbally by the informant and the registrar simply recorded the details related to them, taking it on trust that what was said was accurate."

I also check the date of registration and compare with the date of the event.